
/ / 



The Finest View of Old Fort Berthold. 

[From the Morrow Collection, Taken in 1870.] 

Sn&ian iaiHage--A l^aviinl Weiu of Man 
dan ani ^titnv^c muavUt. 



KALEIDOSCOPIC 
LIVES, 



COMPANION BOOK TO 

FRONTIER / INDIAN 



BY 
J^SM^M HB)KB:.Y T«TI<@li, 

Author of "Frontier and Indian Life," Etc. 



3liru$tr^tea:| 



.j:^ Second Edition.^ 



WASHBURN, N. D. 

Printed and Published by the Author. 

1902. 






THTLIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

T'vo CoHts Recsived 

StP. 5 1902 

COPVRIOHT ENTRY 

CUASS A-^XXo. No. 

0OF*V 3. 



COPYRIGHTED, 1896, 1001, 

JOSEPH HENRY TAYLOR. 



PREFACE. 

Although complete in itself, yet as its sub-title indi- 
cates, this little book is but a continuation of and com- 
panion to "Sketches of Frontier and Indian Life on 
the Upper Missouri and Great Plains" a collection of 
historical incidents, reminiscences and personal recollec- 
tions of the free wild life in the regions named ; a work 
put forth by the author many years ago, and now run- 
ning to the close of its third edition. This companion 
volume of sketches though bordering romance in the 
manner of presentation of some of the characters and of 
their doings as herein chronicled, are — as were those of 
the preceding book — but a plain record of the actual. 

The actors in the cast of these stirring dramas were 
of both the red and white race, from diverse tribes and 
nationalities. They were of those who make their own 
ideal as to character with more originality and less of the 
imitative which render companionable the greater mass 
of the human kind. 

I write of scenes that cannot be re-enacted and will 
never be duplicated for the conditions do not now exist 
that brought them forth. I write of an individualism 
that could only have sprang from such conditions and 
surroundings, and with such disappearance, all have 
now passed or are passing on with time's eternal transit, 
leaving but imperfect records behind to mark their time 
and stage of action. the author. 



CON^TENTS, 



The Opening Sketch 5 

On Diverging Lines 20 

A Chronicle of Dog Den Range 48 

Blazing a Backward Trail 66 

Of Two Graves in the Black Hills 78 

The Bismarck Penitentiary 90 

From West to East 98 

Little Bear Woman 108 

The Two Strangers 114 

Chief of the Stranglers 121 

Where the Spotted Otter Play 134 

Bloody Knife and Gall 143 

A Romantic Encounter 160 

The Closing Story 182 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Indian Village at Fort Berthold - Frontispiece. 

Facing Page 

Guinea Station, Virginia - - - - 5 

One of Keenan's Troopers - - - 8 

Painted Woods Lake - - - - 13 

Aricaree Village Near Rees Own River - 20 

Long Soldier, Uncpapa Chief - - - 24 

La-ton-ga-sha 28 

A Frontier Home ... . - 48 

Issuing Rations to the Fort Berthold Indians 66 

Sluggish waters of Douglas River - - 78 

Dan Williams 90 

Indian Village at Fort Berthold — Mandan 

and Grros Ventre quarter - - - 98 

Bad Lands near old Fort Berthold - - 108 

Little Bear Woman 112 

A Sioux Indian Village on Yellowstone River 113 

Joseph Dietrich - - - - - 121 

William Cantrell— Flopping Bill - - 131 

The Square Buttes 134 

Bone Monument at Ouster's Last Stand - 142 

Chief Gall 143 

Fort Clark 148 

Gros Ventre Village on Knife River - - 155 

Little Big Horn River - - - - 157 
Scene of Encounter between Sioux and 

Aricarees near Washburn, N. D. - - 160 

Son of the Star 162 



Fort Benton in 1870 - - - - 163 

Spotted Tail, Wife and Daughter - - 165 

Okoos-tericks and Friends - - - 173 

Indian Burial Ground on Upper Missouri - 182 

The Snake— A Ponca Warrior - - - 187 

Iron Bull — Chief of Crow Nation - - 195 

Long Dog— Bandit Chief - - - 199 

Cheyenne Village on Kosebud River - - 205 

x> ^ ■^yu>t ^ oc 

Note— 111 the summer of 1870, S. J. Morrow, a photographer 
from Yankton, S. D., ascended the Missouri river by steamboat,— 
taking along a 4x5 camera and made use of it by getting some 
fine, even though limited views of the Indian village at Fort Ber- 
thold and other historic places and scenes, also some excellent 
photos of prominent Indian chiefs and head men of that period. 
These were the first photograpic views of the last among 
the hundreds of villages of this character that at one time or 
another were dotted along the banks of the Upper Missouri. 
On the photographer's return to his gallery, he printed off and 
disposed of a few of his pictures when by accident his negatives 
were destroyed. After 30 years gone, with the assistance of L. W. 
Case, F. M. Zeibach and other good citizens of Yankton, their book 
cases were searched with the result of which now appears in this 
and its companion book "Frontier and Indian Life." It is over 
15 years since that village was destroyed and its inhabitants 
scattered and not a trace of its existance save uneven surface 
now mark the site of this once noted Indian town. Photograph- 
ers Barry, DeGraff and C. M. Diesen contribute views of a more 
recent date. 



THS OPENING SKETCH. 

ON the 5th day of May I863, under a Virginia 
sun warm and sultry, some three hundred 
of us bUie coats stood huddled in groups under 
the shifting shades of a clump of pine trees on the 
line of the Fredericksburg and Richmond road, 
and but a few miles south of the first named town. 
We were garnered trophies of the victorious south- 
erners, and had yielded up our guns at the various 
stages of the conflict the past seven days around 
the Chancellorsville House, or down the pike 
about Salem church. 

While most of the prisoners were from mfantry 
regiments, a few artillerists and some cavalrymen 
were among these vanquished men of arms. Of 
the cavalrymen here, — perhaps a dozen in all — 
some were members of the Eighth Pennsylvania, 
once known as Chormann's Mounted Riflemen. 

In the retrospect regimental, this body of men 
had been recruited with a partial promise of west- 
ern service, but once organized and ready for bus- 
iness its organizer and promoter was quietly and 
effectually shelved and Colonel Gregg — a West 
Pointer entrusted with the command. The green 
stripes of the rifles gave way for the yellow, and 



6 KALIDOSCOPIC LIVES, 

thus went forth this command winninor fame for 
eood service and hard work. First with McClellan 
on the \'iroinia Peninsula: takino the advance at 
WiUiamsburor; runnino- the artillerv oauntlet at 
Bottom's bridge on the Chickahominv; sustainino- 
Couch and Casey at Fair Oaks, and takino^ active 
part in the culminating crisis of the seven days 
battles in front oi' the Confederate capital and the 
retreat to Harrison's landing and down the James. 
Then again with McClellan in the Maryland cam- 
paign, and after the Southerners' defeat at Aniie- 
tam, under the lead oi level-headed Pleasanton. 
the methodical Grei^j^ and the dashino- Keenan. 
supported and assisted b\ the Sth Illinois cavalry, 
and two squadrons of the 3rd Indiana horse, took 
up the pursuit of Lee's broken hosts from the 
reddened waters of Antietam creek, across Dam 
No. 4 on the swift flowing Potomac and over the 
mountain ridges and through Ashby's Gap. on 
down to the green dotted hills of the serpentine 
Rappahannock stream. Such was the regimental 
summary up to the events oi Fredericksburg and 
Chancellorsville. After that came Gettysburg, 
but with new recruits and without its Keenan, the 
once noted reeinient followed more restful lines. 
Some of this cavalry group had been unhorsed 
in Major Keenan's charge down the Gordonsville 
plank road in which with scarcely more than three 
hundred cavalrymen made the mad charge against 
Jackson's tlanking division numbering near twenty 
thousand veterans, in order to gain ten minutes 
precious time, which enabled Gen. Pleasanton's 



THE OPEXIXlt sketch. 7 

battery of tiying artillery to take position, unlim- 
ber their o^uns and thus rescue Hooker's army 
of over one hundred thousand men from panic and 
total rout, as was McDowell's leo^ions at the tirst 
Bull Run. Facing Jackson's solid columns. Kee- 
nan and many of his men became a sacritice and 
all would soon have been but for the timely * right 
about" of Major Huo^hey — seond in command. 

The desperate dash had accomplished all that 
was asked or expected — and much more — it had 
disconcerted lackson's well conceived plans and 
which led directly to his death. While the South- 
erners slew a Patroclus the Unionists had bore 
down their girded Hector. 

.A part of the cavalry group— the writer among 
the number — after the charge on the plank road, 
had been ordered to recross the Rappahannock 
at Bank's Ford. m:>ve out toward Salem church 
as a diversion covering safety in Sedgwick's re- 
treat to the north bank. The move was by moon- 
light — full faced with a cloudless sky. A foe in 
ambush with an inflading tire on the rear guard; 
a miss of the ford and the woods full of Georgians 
left but little choice between a well punctured 
Federal or in swelling the prisoners ranks along 
the Richmond road. Thus it was, a small rear 
guard of the black horse company became pris- 
oners of war. 

Over in fronc of our guarded cordon stood the 
little isolated Guinea Scation. with its bleak and 
cheerless view, where were ranged a few hospital 
tents pitched among stumps and mud. and some 



8 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

grey coated officers and soldiers loitering around 
in respectful silence, for beneath the station's de- 
caying roof, and within its four dingy walls, Stone- 
wall Jackson, the great southern chieftain la) 
dying. 

Whether for good or whether for ill, the scribe 
of these pages as a member of, and the first en- 
rolled soldier of the West Chester Rities, it being 
among the all-ready companies quick to respond 
to President Lincoln's first call after Port Sumter 
had fallen, and under plain Ben Sweeney as cap- 
tain, were assigned to the Second Pennsyhania 
infantry, Col. Staumbaugh in command, was at 
the fiorht at Fallinor Waters near Martinsburor, in 
June, iS6i, in which Jackson's brigade of \^ir- 
ginians faced the van guard of Patterson's army, 
and with the exception of his light with Shields in 
the Shenandoah and the Harper's F'erry surren- 
der; had been among the opposing forces to 
this famed warrior in every general encounter 
from the Martinsburg pike June 17th. 1861, to the 
rising of the moon above the scrub pines along 
the Gordon ville plank road May 2nd, 1863. In 
other words — as to the American civil war — I was 
in Jackson's first fight and in Jackson's last battle. 

xAnd yet. within a few miles of our prison quar- 
ters but three days since, this strangely gifted 
and now dying soldier had won his most brilliant 
of his many military triumphs, the disasterous 
repulse to Hooker's magnificantly equipped army 
at the Chanceliorsville House. But now on the 
pinnacle of his fame, and in the hour of his parti- 




One of Keenan's TRO^PER'^^. 



THE OPIWIXO SKETCH. 1) 

sans direst needs, he had been cut down by iin- 
<;uarded sentinels of his own Division, and what 
would seem more strange — by pickets of his own 
posting. 

While on his bed o( pain and in the shadow of 
death, we, viciinis ot his prowess and prisoners of 
war, felt a common sorrow with our captors over 
the traoic end o( this remarkable man. 

Haviiio contracted an illness after the past 
week's exposure, I applied to the officer of the 
t^uard for medical treatment, when a hospital stew- 
ard of a Mississippi regiment— the iSth, I think it 
was — came up and gave the desired medicine. 
He was a tall, well formed, gentlemanly appear- 
ing kind of a man, about thirty years of age. He 
seemed of an inquiring nature, asking many ques- 
tions about Hooker's army and of the North. As 
he turned to go to other duties, he raised a hand 
and pointing his index finger toward the Station, 
said hurriedly: 

'if Stonewall dies over there, our luck's run 
down and 1 am going to get out of this." 

The next morning the captain of our guard — 
6 1 St Georgia regiment — bawled out facetiously: 

Attention! Yanks! On to Richmond, for- 
ward march!" 

And thus our weary foot journey to a Southern 
prison pen commenced. It ended at Castle 
Thunder, the Libby and Belle Isle; then a prison- 
er on parole, but to some of the party — Ander- 
sonville, starvation and death. 

As we passed along through the sweltering 



]u KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

streets of Richmond, the prcnid capital was draped 
in deep mourning. The tlags were lowered from 
their mastheads; the public b'lildino^s as well as 
private dwellings were lined with crape. They all 
bent in sorrow for the one man whose loss was of 
more moment to them than the destruction of 
one of their great armies; the fleeting years has 
told us that was even more disasterous to the 
combative Southern — the beeinnine of the end of 
the Confederacy itself. 

In the month oi February. 1864. I w-as stopping 
at a Platte river ranch, in central Nebraska, nurs- 
ing a pair of frozen feet, the result of exposure 
in my tirst experience in a blizzard on the plains. 

Being casually informed one day by my kind 
and obliging hostess that a newcomer at a neigh- 
boring ranch down the trail was doing some won- 
ders in the medical and healing art — a kind of a 
doctor, she heard her neio^hbors sav — and advised 
my seeing him. Acting promptly on the informa- 
tion I hobbled down to the place, and after being 
admitted to the new doctor's presence, found to 
my surprise that the gentleman before me was no 
other than my quondam acquaintance, the hospital 
steward of Guinea Station, Virorinia. 

He gave my case attention, would have no re- 
numeration, but in course of conversation, findino^ 
that I would soon pass up the trail through Colum- 
bus, on the Loup, asked as a special favor that I 
deliver a letter in person, and in case of her ques- 
tioning, a guarded verbal message to a lady in 



I 



THE OPEXIXG SKETCH. 11 

the village. 

He would leave, he s^d, in a day or two by the 
Ben Halloday stage line on the overland route to 
Denver. Colorado, or might possibly go on to the 
City of the Saints. In any event, the letter or 
message was not to be delivered until previously 
notified that he was on his way to the mountains. 

About the time agreed upon. I delivered the 
message as was pledged. But, beforetime. on 
inquiry* among some of the gossipy denizens of 
ihe village, I found that the lady in question was 
something of a myster\' to them. She \i-as reticent, 
avofded social calls or N-isits, and seemed to shun 
publicity' in any manner. But the ever pr\ing 
and restless searchers after the sensational had lo- 
cated her previous residence at the Mormon capi- 
tal on the Great Salt Lake, and that she was the 
wife of an oliicer of some rank in the Confederate 
army. 

I found on presentation, that she was a fair ap- 
pearing young woman of twentv -five or there- 
about, wi,.h a mild mannered countenance of a 
somewhat saddened cast. I gave her the letter 
to read, and remained standing near the door, hat 
in hand. She read the missive without any pre- 
cepriWe diange of countenance. 

**Please de^: e ^endeman who ^ve vou 

this?" she asked, rising tirom her chair and tadng 
me calmly, with the missive in hand, 

I did as requested, but with caution and no su- 
perfluous words, and I noticed a crimsom flow mo- 
mentarily chase die pallor from her dieeks. Alto- 



12 KALRIDOSOOPIO LIVES. 

a short silence, she said with something of a pas- 
si n^i tremor in her voice: 

"This letter tells me my husband is dead. Your 
description of the one who sent this, tells me he 
is living." 

After a few more hurried questions and answers, 
1 bowed myself from her presence and saw her no 
more. 

In August of that same year, while on an over- 
land journey from Nebraska City, on the Missouri 
river by way of the Platte river, Pike's Peak and 
tributaries of the Upper Arkansas, to Fort Union, 
New Mexico, we made a noon camp on the plum- 
studded banks of the river Huerfano, and within 
the shade almost of the naked summits of the 
Spanish Peaks — those twin cloud-reachers that 
over-look the surrounding mountainous chain. 

Here, again, in the predestined line, or by plain 
chance, my Doctor friend once more came to view. 
He was jogging along, with a work-my-passage 
air on the back of a little Mexican jack and club- 
bing two others ahead of him as packs; was clothed 
in a gaudy suit of fringed buckskin; a handsome 
display of armoral equipments, boots, spurs and 
a broand sombrero that did duty as hat, umbrella 
and in folicksome windstorms cut the antics of a 
kite. He said he had just came up from a re-pro- 
vision trip on the Arkansas river at Boone's old 
trading post. 

In reply to my further questioning, answered 
that he had turned prospector — or rather resumed 




o 



7; 

Q 

o 
o 



THE OPENING SKETCH. 13 

that facinating callino^ — having some experience 
before the war, in Utah and Nevada, and thought 
no\v to develop his luck around the Peaks; the 
gulches of the Greenhorn, and possibly over the 
F'ort Garland way. A recent trip in that direc- 
tion, brought him some gold, with color enough 
for good prospects. 

He, lately, he furthermore said, had some little 
trouble, hereabout in convincing the military 
authorities, and some civiHans as well that he was 
not surgeon-general in Reynold's army ot Colo- 
rado insurgents, that had just been captured up 
the Arkansas above Canon City, by a part of Col. 
Chivington s command. But now as about all 
were dead who participated in that disasterous at- 
tempt to help the dying Confederacy at the ex- 
pense of Colorado's peace, he had nothing further 
to fear save now and then a threatened raid from 
the red Kiovvas and Comanches. 

Our train rolled out of the valley to the sun- 
heated sands of the table lands, leaving the cheer- 
ful miner in solitary camp near the fording. He 
seemed busy over a camp fire with his culinary 
affairs, and the tired, hungry looking pack don- 
•keys browsing by the hill side. That interview- 
was the last as far as we were a party, for the 
Doctor and I never met again. 

One night in August, 1872, while at my then 
home at Painted Woods, northern Dakota, I was 
awakened from a sound sleep by a loud ''hello" 
from the prairie. It was from the throat of a be- 



U KALEIDOSCOPfC LIVES. 

wilderfcd dispatch carrier, who, in coming from 
Camp Hancock on his way to Fort Stevenson, 
had missed the trail in the darkness, and was wan- 
dering aimlessly and hopelessly about yelling to 
the night gods for inspiration and guidance. After 
locating his distressful sounds, I answered him, 
when he begged me to relieve him of the military 
dispatch and take it to its destination. I had al- 
ready taken a good nap; had a fresh, v^ell {cd pony 
at hand, and, as by contract, the message must be 
delivered to the commanding officer by sunrise, 
saddled, bridled and mounted, and pulled out for 
the long, lonesome, fifty mile ride. 

At the break of day, I had reached the big hill, 
— the place where the town of Coal Harbor now 
crowns the apex — and in passing along the trail 
through the coulee beyond, my ears caught the 
sounds of clattering hoofs drawing down toward 
me. As the approaching phantom seemed omin- 
ous, and thinking perhaps it was a red man with a 
"bad heart," — an always possibility around there 
in those days — I cocked my rifle, and also heard a 
counter click at almost the same instant. 

"White or red," I bellowed nervously. 

"White," came the ready answer, and in an in- 
stant later a great burly, bushy-bearded fellow 
was by my side. 

"Well you want my credentials I suppose," he 
said in a loud course voice, "and here you have it. 
I am Mountain jim of Arizona. My habits are 
goosish — north in summer, south in winter. I 
have summered over on the British boundary and 



THE OPENING SKETCH. 15 

am now bound for the Rio Grande. Now, pard 
for yours." 

Well, as time was precious just then, I chipped 
my words, and the result was we rode up towards 
the frowning Fort together, as it danced before 
our bewildered optics in the glistening rays of an 
early autnmn sunrise. 

My mission ended and pony rested, and with 
Mountain Jim as traveling companion, returned to 
the Painted Woods. Here, at the little stockaded 
bastion, Jim found it agreeable to himself to rest 
and recruit like the geese he was trying to imitate, 
which were even then in noisy flocks in front of 
him on the mid-bars of the wide Missouri. 

During our course of conversation, I found that 
he was well acquainted in Colorado, and New 
Mexico, and among other questions about parties 
there asked if he knew of a wandering prospector 
called the Doctor. 

"Oh yes" he quickly replied, 'I knew of that 
poor fellow and of his wind-up too." 

He then told the following story, the main par- 
ticulars I can only repeat, from memory's records, 
prefacing it with a few words about the lay of the 
land. 

One of the more important ranges of mountains 
diverging from the Rocky chain js the Ratoons of 
northeastern New Mexico. A well worn govern- 
ment trail formerly led across it at the Picketwire 
pass, it being in direct line between the freighting 
points on the Missouri river, via the middle Arkan- 
sas river route — so called — and Fort Union, for 



10 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

many years the principal distributing point for 
military supplies in the southwestern territories. 

The Ratoon has also its full share of ghosts and 
mysteries; the border lands between the Ute and 
the Comanchie — the eastern frontier of the 
dreaded Apache, and the blue lines of dread to 
the hunted Mexican shepherds, around the primi- 
tive towns of Las Vegas and El Moro. 

Near the summit of the Ratoon on this trail 
surrounded by timbered gulches and canons is a 
large clear water spring with fine, though rather 
limited pasture grounds for stock. The writer 
well remembers that in that overland journey of 
1864-5, that at this place were the bones of over 
seven hundred head of oxen, the victims of tlie 
severities of an October snow storm and short 
i'eed. The loss to the freighters was gain for the 
bears, which were numerous here, as well as the 
savage brindle wolves. 

On one occassion, during the summer of 1868, 
a party of freighters and stockmen while on their 
way across the Ratoon range by way of Picketwire 
pass, encamped for the night on the summit near 
these springs, and avvoke next morning to find a 
portion of their heard missing. In looking around 
they discovered a fresh running trail leading over 
the divide on the west side, and a party of eight 
men started upon it in a rapid and determined gait. 

The course was a zigzag one. but finally passed 
over the rough hills north of Maxwell's noted 
ranch on the Cimmaron river. In a deep gulch 
along one of that river's little tributaries, they 



THE OPENING SKETCH. 17 

came rather unexpectedly on a lone white man 
setting complacently by a small camp fire with a 
few rude dishes; a miner's pick and some other 
tools, and a canvass sack of supposed provisions. 
Near by were three Mexican burros browsing con- 
tentedly. But a little way beyond them the sharp 
eyes of part of the stockmen detected some other 
animals, which on closer inspection proved to be 
the stock they were seeking. 

A short conversation among themselves, they 
proceeded to the place of the lone camper, and 
without a word other than an nnaudible signal, 
the stranger was pounced upon and bound. He 
seemed helpless and dumbfounded at the sudden 
assault and ihe after accusation. He had been 
charged with the theft of his captors' stock, and 
they setting as judge, jury, witnesses, and the 
last court of earthly appeal, had condemned him 
to be strangled to death. 

The condemned man protested vehemently. 
He was a miner not a thief He claimed absolute 
innocence of the charge, but to no avail. Stolen 
horses were found in his possession, And pos- 
session under such circumstances as he was sur- 
rounded means guilt, and guilt wouldmean death. 

He was therefore without further ado, and on 
his part without further struggle, taken by his 
merciless captor's to a scraggy tree and swung up 
by the neck and left to swing to and fro with the 
shifting winds. 

While hardly through with their cruel work, 
some of the lynchers espied, a short distance away. 



18 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

a man gliding along through a clump of bushes, 
as though in apparent hiding. A chase was at 
once commenced on this second stran<:rer. and 
after a wild and exciting time, was run down, 
caught and securely pinoned. He proved to be a 
Mexican and when confronted with the charge, in 
his terror confessed to the stealing ot his captors' 
stock, and begged piteously for mercy. He had 
stolen them unaided and alone. When questioned 
about the man just hanged, said that to him per- 
sonally he was a stranger, though he knew of him 
as an occassional caller over at Fort Garland for 
supplies, being a wandering prospector, and was 
known there as the Doctor. 

The truth now dawned on the conscience-strick- 
en hangmen, that an innocent man had been foully 
strangled by their hands. They hurriedly returned 
to the body but it was cold. The lifeless form 
was cut from the suspending rope and with many 
self-reproaches, rolled up in his blankets, laid in a 
shallow grave with a note tacked upon an excuse 
for a headboard — "hanged by mistake," and by 
some strange caprice or an inward feeling of hor- 
ror for what they had done the Mexican was set 
free. 

"How vain our most confident hopes, our bright- 
est triumphs." So wrote Irving in summing up 
DeBalbo's unhappy end. How true also in this 
case. In the murdered prospector's camp was 
found rich ore recently mined, and as it was but a 
short time later the Cimarron mines were discov^- 



THE OPENING SKETCH. 



19 



erd and opened, that brought wealth to many, we 
cannot doubt that the Doctor had been their first 
discoverer, and while quietly working away for a 
homestake the dark shadow of an ignominious 
death came upon him and closed his golden dreams 
forever. 




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OH DIYERQINC IiINaS. 

ON the south bank of the Missouri, nine miles 
north of where the Cannonball river joins 
thtt great Continental artery, terminate the range 
of isolated and uneven highlands now generally 
termed th« Little Heart ridge. If the Gros Ven- 
tre Indians can bring forth plain truth from their 
legend of the summit of these upheaved crags, it 
was here one fifth of the remnant of that tribe 
rested and were saved from the destruction that 
overwhelmed so many of their people several 
hundred years ago, when the floodgates from the 
ice bound Arctic seas were unloosened and a de- 
luge of waters poured down the Saskatchewan 
depression, and submerged all but the extreme 
high points of land, only decreasing in depth 
as the waters spread out on the wide southern 
plains on its destructive path to join the tepid 
stream in the Mexican gulf. 

About one mile south of this ridge can be seen 
a few isolated bluffs for the most part bare of veg- 
etation, and on their topmost peaks, round open- 
ings, that at the distance of the bluffs base, to an 
ordinary eye, seem portholes from a frowning 
fortress. In these cones, as early as the opening 
dkys of this century, the first intrepid explorers 
of the now dominent race, saw flying hither and 
thither from these apertures the proudest birds in 
all this land — the war eagle of the wild Indians.! 



21 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

Across the Missouri, and northeast of these 
described lands, but some miles away was a body 
of water known to the native Sioux as "Mde Hans- 
ka" or the Long Lake. Apart from its shape — 
long and narrow — the lake had no significance, 
except that its boggy shores sheltered broods of 
wild fowl, and its location a convenient...^camping 
place for hunters of the antelope. 

In the order of marking time-^being then the 
month of July. 1864, — part of the Sully expedi- 
tion, a command of several thousand .spldiers sent 
out by the government to punish and subdue cer- 
tain hostile bands of the Sioux in the nortwest, 
had reached this vicinity, just described, when 
a detatchment of the 50th regiment of Wisconsin 
volunteers, actincr under orders from the Wash- 
Ington war office, and who were encamped near 
the creek at the base of the cone hills, commenced 
to slash down the timber of neighboring groves, 
ant] tear up the virgin sod and manufacture 
adobe or sun dried brick, — so familiar in the con- 
siruciion of dwellings of the natives of New and 
old Mexico, 

The building of a ''soldier tepee" at that point 
was not relished by the wary Sioux. They could 
not understand the motive of the white soldiers 
in wanting to build a ''big war house" among the 
cone hills that had long been sacred precincts of 
incubation of this bird of war; whose tail feath- 
ers transferred to their own heads were badges 
of a warrior's rank — marked in degree — -one tail 
feather for each -'coo*' that would count for an 



ON DIVERGING LINES. 22 

enemy slain. Thus in pride, not even in name 
would they associate these invading white soldiers 
with the home of the war eagle, or the miniature 
Mount Arrat of the Gros Ventres, but as long as 
the banner floated in the breeze, or a log rested up- 
on the site of barrack or watch tower, that marked 
the historic ground of old Fort Rice, the Yankton 
Sioux and their allied bands persisted in calling 
that military post, ''Mde Hanska Akecita Tepee" 
or as interpreted into plain English, — Long Lake 
Soldier house. 

Across the river from Fort Rice in these days 
of the military occupation, and a few miles down 
stream was a piece of low land known as the 
''lower hay bottom." It was here — except in 
very dry seasons — that the hay contractor could 
finish up his provender contract with the post 
quartermaster, but in these exceptional cases a 
further haul was made upon the matted hay lands 
of the Horsehead, a few miles further down 
stream. But it was the ''lower hay bottom" that 
interested the writer and some traveling compan- 
ions in the autumn of 1869, when a comrade who 
had done duty in the regimental band at the fort 
had told his story of an incident of the haying 
season, and pointed out a clump of oak as the 
spot made noted by a fortold death. Our musi- 
cal comrade of the journey had joined us at Fort 
Sully, being on his return from a furlough east. 
Upon after inquiry among the soldiers of the gar- 
rison his story was confirmed, and one of these 



23 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

soldiers and after scout — Gros Ventre Thompson 
— recounted this dream mystery, frequently, up 
to the day of his death — twenty eight years after. 
Here is the record as related at the time: 
In the haying season at the frontier military 
posts, especially when there was danger from 
hostile Indian raids, it was customary for post 
commanders to furnish the hay contractors' 
with a soldier escort both for the hay camp proper 
as well as the moving train of hay haulers. The 
camp detail was usually made for the week, com- 
mencing Monday mornings. At the opening of 
the haying season of 1868 at Fort Rice, the usual 
demand was made on the post commandant tor 
escort for the lower haying camp, as small war 
parties of hostile Indians were known to be on the 
move. The detail was ordered and among the 
names of those, who. in the order of chance was 
placed upon the hrst sergeant's roll, was that of a 
young soldier named Vane. On hearing his name 
called for the detail, the soldier boy bursts into 
tears, and begged to be transferred to some other 
duty. When pressed for reasons — he related a 
strange dream of the previous night, in which he 
stood in the crotch of a low growing and scragjj^y 
oak tree, looking over a plain of waving grass, 
when he saw that he was shot and felt himself 
in the sensations of dying, and was thus in affright 
when the bugle sounded the morning revel le. 

He was ridiculed by his companions, but he 
could nor be comforted and even went to the post 
commander witk his plea, but the result was he 




Long Soldier, 

Uncpapa Chief, whose band har- 

rassed the Garrison at old 

Fort Rice in the 

Sixties. 



ON DIVERGING LINES. 24 

joined the escort and went down to the hay field. 
As he came near the camp he pointed to the tree 
clump of his dream. Calmness reigned in air 
on water and within the troubled breast. The 
low muffled sounds of the mowing machines at 
work, alone reached the ears of the soldier escort 
as they lay curled in the tent shade watching laz- 
ily the hay pitchers sweltering under an August 
sun. 

"Indians!" 

'Oh, Indians be damned," yawned a soldier, 
'•not a hostile scare crow within a long hundred 
miles." 

The timid antelope feed quietly in sight upon 
the neighboring^ bluffs. The ravan croaks and 
caws unconcernedly in airial flight, — hovering be- 
tween bluff and woodland. The little yellow 
flanked swifts, trot around windward of the camp 
fire, sniffing with unappeased hunger. 

''Indians!" 

"How scary those haymakers must be!" drawled 
a peevish escort, "to have us dragged down here 
to watch Indians for them. Bah!" 

Some soldiers arise and whist the straws from 
their woolen cloths and walk here and there to pass 
slow time away. Some go over and talk to the 
haymakers; some to the river and two^^or three 
wander to the bluffs. The report of a gun now 
break the stillness. A bevy of chickens skurry 
through the air in affright. The ravans cease 
their cawing; the swifts had slunk away; the day 
orb casting its lengthing'shadow across hill and 



25 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

valley, — the big crimson ball seemingly linger- 
ing behind the darkened rear base of the long 
high peaks where once the Gros Ventres hoped 
and prayed. The rays waft back a stream of 
purple across the profile on Horshead hills, and 
ihe verest glimpse of receeding shadows of 
some horsemen in single file are noted ere they 
vanish. 

The alarm is given and both soldiers and hay- 
makers centre at the camp. Vane alone is miss- 
ing. A search is ordered and a report reached. 

"Did yon find him?" asked the corporal com- 
manding, of aa Irish soldier who had linorered in 
the search. 

"Yes sir! ' 

"Where was he?" 

"In the oak clump." 

"Asleep?" 

"No, Dead. Bullet in his head. Scalp torn 
off. Stripped and mutilated." 

"Saw no Indians?" 

"None." 

II 

There are times in the matter of unimportant 
detail where memory refuses to "catch on" or 
help out, when a record of the event sought be- 
come misplaced. I wave positiveness in saying it 
was the steamer Big Horn, that brought General 
Hancock and party from Fort Stevenson to Fort 
Rice, on ihe 4th of July 1869. though personally 
fortunate to be — at least temporarily--of the party. 
But as this chronicle is a record of events and of 



ON DIVERGING LINES. 26 

characters of which the Hancock party had noth- 
ing to do, — I beg pardon of of my readers for 
this opening digression. But upon this occasion 
while that disiinguested officer was entertaining 
tlie commandant at Fort Rice and fellow officers 
with a flow of claret and champagne from the re- 
cepdun cabin on the steamer, the chronicler of 
these pages had hied himself up the gangway, 
and after a few hundred yards stroll, found himself 
on a cracker box seat at Durfee & Peck's trading 
house and sutler store for the garrison. 

Gala day had brought all the post characters 
there. Leaning against the counter with his legs 
crossed, rested P>ank Lafrombeau, the half breed 
Sioux mterpreter, who seemed dreaming of the 
awaiting ferryman about to take him across the 
dark river. Beside him and watching the display of 
red and black blankets and bright caicoes, was the 
interpreter's Sioux brother-in-law — One Hundred, 
at that time the most noted Indian horse thief on 
the Upper Missouri, Some soldiers were joshing 
him and he was giving "back talk" in fair English. 
He had previously made a trip to St. Louis city; 
had picked up considerable roguery, and but lit- 
tle else, other than his language addition that was 
any real benefit, — rather the reverse. 

Further along the counter, stood a tall black 
man examining some newly purchased articles in 
company with the partner of his bosom — a smiling 

Sioux matron. He rattled away in Sioux now 

to his red painted wife — now to One Hundred 



27 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

now to some loung^ing Sioux scouts, — speaking to 
the white soldier or citizen, only when spoken'to. 
Why should He do otherwise? Let the magician 
now wave a prophet's wand over this black man's 
head, and call down time for a year on what is to 
be. What do we see? A covering of cold earth 
for Lafrombeau — a post interpretor's garlands for 
this Africo-American. Again raise the wand of 
magic over this kinky head— call time's advance 
seven years, lacking nine days. What do we see? 
A vale containing hundreds of dead and mutilated 
soldiers. A vale containing thousands of excited 
Indians putting to torture agianiblack. Ramrods 
are used to punch out his eyes; his feet and 
legs filled with shot and small balls. 

'•Why this fiendishness?" asked the writhing 
b!ack. -'Why this hypocrisy?" answered back his 
red tormentors, ''and why assist these white dogs 
in spying us out aud destroying your wife's peo- 
ple?" Thus had black Isaiah fallen — Fort Rice's 
second interpreter. 

But away widi the magicians spell, Away with 
the events of what was to be. Let Isaiah talk 
on with One Hundred — let the soldiers joke and 
josh in the Durfee & Peck trading house. It is all 
a part of the life drama that they are billed for. 
But another actor now appears at the doorway. 
A boyish face, and form tall and slim. Eyes, blue, 
and with a restless glance, scanning the faces to 
the right and left of him as he strides softly along. 

"How, IMelbourne," spoke out some one from 
among the group of soldiers. 




LA-TOX-GA-SHA. 
Chief of the Sans Arcs Sioux. 



liov. . laruv rcpiicvi lae \Ouiit; iciiow spoken 
to. as he lurned on his heels and walked out the 
doorway, and who was evidently searching for 
some one not within the store room. 

Melbourne seems restless since he received his 
bobtail,' spoke up another soldien as he looked 
toward the door. > 

"Make anybody restless under the circumsianf 
ces.' added still another soldier. *and almost hate 
one's own race and kind ' 

"Yes," chimed in a bystanuing citizen, -it was a 
pretty tough case, as I understand it." 

At that moment the steamers whistl«=- at the 
landing warned all its passenorers that time had 
arrived to pull in the gang planks for a further 
journey down stream, and half an hour later Fort 
Rice and all its *-pomp and circumstance of war." 
was — for the time being — receding from our view. 

After a rapid down stream run oi twenty hours 
the s: earner tied up at Cheyenne agency lono- 
enough to get ourselves and luggage ashore and 
say good bye to casual acquaintences. A week 
or more of observation among the Minnecon- 
jous. Sans Arcs and Etasapa Sioux. I crossed the 
big river, and made camp with some lumbermen 
at Little Bend. I here me: :-soldiers who 

had seen service at Fort R.ct. Enquiry was 
made about the mystery of the Melbo ^^ .-e, 
and here were some of the facts eliciie« 

Melbourne was certainly under ihe lawful a<ye 
when he enlisted as a soldier, though his height 



•ii» KAI/EIDOSC^OPIC LIVES. 

carried him on the rolls. He had enlisu^d alone, 
and nont^ among his new found comrades seem to 
know from whence he came. It was soon discov- 
ered he was a boy of artistic tastes; showed con- 
siderable book knowledge for one so young in 
years, and had a remarkable gift in imitative pen- 
manship. In his general make up. the boy had a 
docile, tractable disposition with modest demeanor 
and obliging ways. 

Many of the older enlisted soldiers at the fron- 
tier posts, in those days, were confirmed topers, 
and some of them, at least could date their en- 
listment from an effort to break away from envi- 
rons that held them in hopeless bondage. A 
small allowance of whiskey, within the scope of 
the army regulations, was habitually served from 
the sutler store of the garrison for such of these 
soldiers whose appetite for intoxicating drinks 
still had control of them. In certain emergencies 
the commander of the post was authorized by the 
war department to allow over his signature, the is- 
suance of a certain amount of whiskey or brandy 
to the party holding the order. In apparent jest 
some of the older heads asked Melbourne to 
write out a whiskey order and sign the post com- 
mandment's name to it. The work was done so 
well that it was repeated again, until the com. 
mander wondered where the laxity came in that 
made a drunken mob which filled the oruard house 

o 

with so many of his soldiers, His wonderment 
grew more intense when shown the leak in com- 
missary whiskey over his own signature, and com- 



mencLHl to fear thai lu; had heen "out of his head" 
at times, as his signed name was so apparently 
genuine he could not doubt the authorship. 

Tke young soldier became feartul of exposure, 
and the consequences thereof, so when solicited 
by his comrades for a renewal of forged orders, 
he absolutely refused. In consequence of re- 
fusal these same soldiers reported to the poit 
commander that the boy Melbourne was the 
author of the whiskey forgeries. As was to be 
expected the young fellow was thrown in the post 
guard house, and while saved from the penitentiary 
by the influence of an officer's wife — dishonorably 
discharged from the United States army. 

During the closing days of August of that year 
1869, the chronicler found himself employed as 
camp lookout or day guard for the two contractors, 
Dillon & McCartney's haying camp, having tem- 
porarily pitched our tent on the west side of the 
big river two miles north of the Grand River 
Agency. The shooting down of Cook a few days 
previous, without excuse or provocation, by a 
brother of the Uncpapa chief, Long soldier, and 
his open boast that this herder w^ould not be the 
last he would send to the "white man's happy 
hunting ground," with the lionizing he received in 
this big brother's camp, put us on our guard. My 
duty was to watch every movement indicating a 
grouping of Indians between their camps on Oak 
creek and the hay cutters at work. They had 
made many threats, and we w^ere hourly in expec- 



31 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

tancy of trouble. Sonic distance above our camp 
was that of the cattle contractor's herd, with the 
two Mulls— Fadden and Herron in charge. The 
lands about here were full of historic Interest to 
the Indian race, especially the persecuted Arica- 
recs. Three miles away on the south— forcing its 
way through a semi-sterile line of tortuous blufts 
from the west comes in the swift iiovving, modern 
Grand, but named with two centuries of practice — 
in courtesy by the all conquering Sioux, — Pah- 
donee Towa Wakpah — or as interpretc^d into 
the Encrjish tongue — Rees Own River. Beyond 
its banks of alternate sand and clay and midway 
widiOak creek's parallel lines, the uneven ground 
mounds and depressions mark the site of the olu 
village where the Aricaree chiefs scorned the 
profcred whiskey tendered them by Lewis and 
Clark in 1804, with the sensible remark that "peo- 
ple who tried to make fools of us by taking 
away our wits, could not be our friends." 

From my camp observatory— on the bench lands 
near by was another interesting site— and like the 
dreamer that I was, went down from my perch 
one pleasant afternoon to revel among the ruins. 
It was here thirty six years before, that this little 
Aricaree town consisti-ig oi about one hundred 
and fitly lodges, poorly palisaded— yielded up as 
a sacrifice on the alter of helpless prejudice the 
warm blood of many of iis mothers 2nd iis 
daughters—of sons and fathers. From my stony 
^lard perch on yonder hill, had belched forth 
...om big morter guns shot and shell on diis hap- 



ON DIVERGING LINES 32 

less town many years before evacuation by its 
builders and owners and its final destruction by 
the all conquering Sioux. On the lowlands be- 
yond had come the soldiers under Leavenworth; 
the frontiersmen under Ashley and the wild Sioux 
of the plain all bearing' down on the fearless vil- 
lagers and their well cultivated fields of ripened 
corn. This was on the ever fateful roth day of 
August 1823. You can wonder as I had done, 
considering the great advantage in equipment 
and numerial superiority of their enemies how 
any of the Aricarees got away, but they did^ — 
though many of them were left among the lodges 
and on the plain as feed for coyotes and buzzards. 

I could see the upper town as painted by Catlin a 
few years before its abandonment and destruction^ 
could see its frail pickets behind which the happy 
villagers reveled in all the pleasures their free, 
wild life gave. In fancy, I could see the inmates 
scan from house top and lookout — objects whose 
sameness never seem to tire the eye. From youth 
to old age, the stone guard of the pinnacle is more 
familiar to the village inmate, than was a member 
of the family, inasmuch as time's eternal transit 
would leave no impress. I pass on to the last 
struggle and see hopelessness and dispair on the 
one side, — an anticipated carnival of blood on the 
other. — 

^•Hello there!" 

My dream or conjuration vanished at the sound. 
Before me stood a tall, pale faced young fellow, 
of 17 or 18 years, with his blue orbs gazing stead- 



33 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

ily in my face. I made a venture at recognition. 

'•Your name is Melbourne, I believe." 

"That's what it is." 

"Sit down then. I want to ask some questions." 

He sat down quietly on a mound with an in- 
tense look of anxious inquiry pictured on his boy- 
ish looking face. He gave a look of surprise 
when questioned about his boyhood but his replies 
were so studiously evasive that I changed tack to 
Fort Rice, and of the trouble that led to his dis- 
missel from the army. He made but little more 
admission than what has already been told. It 
was plain to be seen the subject was distasteful. 

"Hello," said he suddenly looking up towards 
the hills, "there goes a crowd of Indians to the 
cow camp, and I must go — won't you come along?" 

"Yes, I'll go long", I replied, '^and see your 
outfit." 

"I am going to ask some old Sioux patriarch 
all about that Ree village," said he, tossing back 
his arm as we jogged along^. 

After reaching the herd camp, we found about 
one dozen Indians of both sexes standing around. 
Norwithstanding my limited amount of Sioux, I 
undertook to draw some information about the 
old Aricaree village from a veteran Uncapapa, but 
the grey haired warrior referred to his chief the 
noted orator Running Antelope, as one of the few 
still living who participated in the destruction of 
that village. 

My dialectic twists and imperfect rendition of 
the Sioux caught Melbourne's attention, and com- 



ON DIVERGING LINES. 36 

III 
1 WAS sitting in the doorstep of the Httle fort- 
fied homestead claim at the Woods, wonder- 
ing as many another had done before and after 
that date — August, 1873 — when, Jand values 
would take a jump and either let us out of the 
farm, or bring »ome encouragement to remain 
in posssession. The timber point in which I was 
domiciled, had been the first squatter land claim 
staked off along the Mi^ouri north of the North- 
ern Pacific railroad, and although the time had been 
but little over a )ear since the advent of the loco- 
motive, the strain of expectancy had a disturbing 
effect on the nerves, notwithstanding the spice of 
existence was somtimcs enlivened by the self in- 
troduction of some "character." Character study 
always inieresiing, sometimes assumes even 
a poetic glint, when the conditions of the mind 
harmonize wiih the poetry in nature. At no 
period in the revoking of the seasons does the 
poeiic or the visionary take possession of the 
the soul within us, as on fine August days. Espe- 
cially ii: this true to the denizens who live along 
the changing banks of the Upper Missouri river, 
which mighty stream save when bound by icy fet- 
ters, is ever presentin^^ itself to the human eye, 
through the revolving^ lens of the kalridoscope. 
Yet with all its shifting moods of anger or serenity 
there is no charm so entransing to the poetical 
dreamer, in solitare of the revery, as along the 
changing and falling banks and within hearing of 



37 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

ihe nuiftled noist^s of :he suirlini^- waters of ihis 
stranee old rivtr. on tranquil autumn n:oriunos. 

rh.:s within hearing of the low n)ari- g- waters 
oirdlcd with a heavy forest of great cottonwoods, 
that hide you in continuous shade,— what wonder 
that the mind becomes mellowed in revers-. 
Characters — no', mithical ones— but oi the plain 
flesh and blood kind, pass in review. Here at 
the gate of this stockade had appeared a war party 
whose onlv trophy of ihei^prowess to show, had 
had been the crimson blotched scalp of a sixteen 
year old. Sioux girl. Characters had been here 
who had talked wisdom from an owl. Characters 
had been here who had seen phantom brats 
manned by phantom crews move noiselessly 
down stream. Less than a year before a vouno 
man of fine physical carriage had passed up the 
trail with no weapon but a hatchet, afoot and alone 
"looking for a team just a little ways ahead." Six 
months later he had rc-appeared. Frozen hands; 
frozen feet — frozen face. Clothed in tatters and 
bareheaded. 

"Where have you been?" had asked a transient 
companion of mine, on the man's reappearance. 

"Living with the deer." 

That was all he had for answer — living with the 
deer. Show me Burleigh City's graveyard and 1 
will show you this man's grave. Xo questions is 
to his name? Xo questions about where he was 
from? Xo inquiry alx>ut the young wife who had 
gone estray? For we will answer no quesdons 
here. But trom b.i^ ^^''<r arri\al on the Slope, th's 



ON DIVERGING LINES. 3S 

cloud\ wanderer's one central thought was in 
looking- for that team— "just a little ways ahead." 
Out trom this reverv. Out from oazino- on 
these shiUing- characters in transit across the 
Woods. The)' march along the boards like the 
stage actors in the Cassandria play. Reynolds — 
McCall the Miner— Bloody Knife — Guppy— Chiss 
Chippereen — Johnny of the Rose Buds — Dia- 
mond the Wolfer — Long Hair Mary. They all 
move across — noiseless phantoms drawn out in 
review lo tlie unseen eye by the brain's conjuration. 
While thus in silent rumination sounds of a walk- 
ing- horse was heard, and a moment later there 
appeared at the timber opening a tall man lead- 
ing a scrub pony, coming toward the stockade, 
The man ambled forward in an ungainly way. A 
lon^i" :om riue of the old sivle — da\s of ourerand- 
father epoch- angled across his shoulder. A 
coon ^kin cap was pressed down over his massive 
1 cad oi matted hair. A long grease soiled 
L'uckskin shirt, wiih tangled fringe?, hung loosely 
over his unshapely form. And over it all hung 
a iiuge old fashioned cow powder horn. A poor 
old pony — having the appearance of being an 
Indian's 'turned out. "with a fairly decent saddle, 
and across the seat were thrown a roll of blankets, 
while tied to the pummel was a gunny sack with 
a mess of flour, and two or three blackened peach 
cans that evidently did duty in the culinary. 

I had seen such habiliments in which this stran- 
ger was attired, pictured in the old early Ohio 
books that told us all about Simon Girty. Lewis 



39 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

Whetzel or old Daniel Boone. Could my eyes 
deceive me. or was this another Rip Van Win- 
kle case; a ninety years sleep? At any rate my 
fad was gratified. I had a new character to solve. 

'•You are a hunter, I guess," I had ventured 
to say. 

'That what I am" he retorted, 

"Where have ycu been hunting? * 

'*Of late— down around Fort Rice.' 

"Get any game down that way?" 

"I reckon I did. Elk, antelope, deer, bear and 
moose.' 

"Moose?" 

"That's what I said. Moose!'' 

"There is no moose on this river." 

"I reckon there is moose on this river. I killed 
a young bull moose on the bottom this side of 
Fort Rice. I reckon I know what I'm talking 
about. I'm a moose hunter from Maine! 

"A moose hunter from Maine?" 

"That's what I am. A moose hunter from 
Maine." 

"Well, unsaddle and bring your donna«e in?" 

That's what I'll do, for I'm going to stay a 
whole month with you. " 

"Baited w^ith curiosity and springing my own 
trap.' said I sofdy. 

On the following morning my unkempt guest 
said his desire was to use ihe stockade as a kind 
of headquarters. He w^ou.'d hunt a little; visit a 
little;^>vith an occasional trip to the town by the 
railroad. This he did. but in his hunts he never 



ON DiVEilGiNa LINES. -u) 

brought back any game; in his visits to distant 
woodyards he brought back no greeting and 
in his weekly visits to the town he brought no in- 
formation from the outside world. 

One day we concluded to visit the Burnt woods 
on the west side where Williams & Wheeler were 
getting out cordwood for the steamboats. Chris 
Weaver here told the story of his premonition at 
the Spanish Woodyard whereby the warning had 
saved his life. The moose hunter was greatly 
interested in its recital. On our road home in 
passing through the long bottom above the little 
fort we espied a traveling war party, and I sug- 
gested we keep out of sight until they passed. 
He complied with alacrity. But some of the red 
warriors had ah'eady seen us, and in our fancied 
security were treated to a surprise. They had 
us surrounded. They were Gros Ventres, how- 
ever, and took in the moose hunter at a glance. 
After surveying his muzzle loading long tom, one 
warrior extending his open palm said in English: 

"Caps!" 

In a second the moose hunter handed him a 
full box of percussions, and the Gros Ventre 
clasped them and made off. 

"Why, what a dough-god to give that Indian all 
your gun caps" I said chidingly. 

"Oh, I've got another box," he replied, ''and if 
I did'nt have, it would' t be much loss," he added 
philosophically. 

A few days later, the hunter said he would 
''take a ramble up to Forts Stevenson and Ber 



41 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

thold," which he did, but failed to return. A Fort 
Buford mail carrier had noted him as a "queer old 
bloke who had stopped at every Indian camp and 
wood yard that he came to." 

The year following the steamer Nellie Peck 
tied up for the night at Mercer & Gray's yard at 
Painted Woods landing. Dr. Terry a St. Louis 
ex-physician was acting as clerk and purchasing 
furs for the Durfee & Peck company. Sitting in 
the boats cabin were a party relating incidents of 
happenings along the river. Among others the 
writer told of his experience with the moose 
hunter froni Maine. At conclusion of the reci- 
tal, Dr. Terry, volunteered the following ad- 
denda: 

^'I happen to know something about your 
moose hunter. You had seen him in a clever 
make-up. He is a good trailer But he is bet- 
ter at huTitins: men than moose. He has a coun 
try-wide reputation as one of the shrewdest 
sleuths on the Pinkerton detective force." 

IV 

At the close of the month of April, r-6j, two 
men »at astride log stools looking into the blazing 
fire in a little makeshift cabin at the lower bend 
of what was known in those days as "Out a luck 
Point," being the second timber bend on the west 
side of the river Missouri above Fc rt Stevenson. 
Both were looking into the blaze in silcRt cogita- 
tion, but whither dreaming over the past or into 
the future the chronicler could not divine. With 



ON DIVERGING LINES. 42 

each of these men past dreams were far from 
pleasant lingerings, and it was well for their peace 
of mind that their dreams ot the future were in 
wide divergence from the actual. But as before 
stated their dreams were known only to them 
selves, but the coming of what was to be, as far 
as their earthly tenure was concerned, became a 
part of the records of their surviving contempor- 
aries. Had the veil hiding actuality of the future 
been raised beyond the burning brands in which 
each of them were silently gazing, each could 
have beheld a thorny path in their few remaining 
years. One could have seen himself shot to 
death, his body placed in a shallow grave with a 
blanket both for shroud and coffin. The site that 
marked his grave now mark the path of swift 
flowing, channel waters. His companion had lin- 
gered in life a few years !aler A gloomy forest 
shrouded him — alone and unseen by mortal man 
he died a maniac's death. Buzzards feasted upon 
his decayed flesh; badgers sported with his scat- 
tered bones. 

"I seed the shadow of that Injun to night agin, 
and don't like it. ' said one of the men without 
withdrawing his gaze from the burning coals. He 
was the larger and older of the two. 

'•Kind a queer," answered his companion, ^'if 
he belonged up in the village and not come around 
here. Been poking about the bluffs for five or 
six days." 

"Jist a week to night since I first seed himl" 



43 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

"Did you cache the stock in a new place to 
nig^ht/' 

-Yes." 

"We ought to rest easy then." 

They did, but in going out to their stock cashe 
next morning their animals were missing. Two fine 
mules and two work ponies. The loss of stock 
forced the abandonment of the woodyard. 

The mules were the property of Trader Mai- 

nori, of Fort Bcrthold. In about four weeks 

from date of disapcarance of the animals the 

trader received the following note through a scout 

dispatch bearer. The language was in French 

with the following English interpretation: 

Fort Rice, (no date.) 
Mr. C. Mahiori: Opanwinge says he found your 
mules. Send a man down with $200 and take them 
home. Yours with regards, F. LaFrombois'j:. 

The man and money was sent to Fort Rice and 

mules and man came home. 

'•I guess, I'll try wood-yarding a little nearer 
home," said Trader Malnori when his mules were 
brought to his stables at Fort Berthold. He had 
some w^ood cut opposite to the fort. The same 
mules were sent across the river to do the wood 
hauling: and the same man sent with ihem who had 
had charge of their keeping at Point Out-a-luck. 
A man known as limmy Deer and two red mat- 
rons crossed over the river in a bull boat to pile 
the cord wood brought to bank. The trail of the 
hauler led through a line of willows for half a 
mile or more. For two or three days all w^ent 



ON DiVERdliVG LINES, 44 

well. Bui it was a dangerous neio^hborhood. The 
driver from Out-a luck had provided himself with 
a Colt's army and a double barreled shot gun 
heavily charged with buck shot. One fine morn- 
ing the driver hitched up his mules as usual and 
trotted the team over the rough bottom road gaily 
to the crib pite. His pistol and shot gun were 
bouncing up and down in the wagon box as he 
hummed an old French song. At a poiat where 
the willows lined a sand ridge a naked Indian 
arose quickly, poinnng a gun at the wagon box 
fired away. The driver, forgeting all about his 
buckshot gun and pistol, dropped his lines and 
springing from the wagon on the opposite side to 
the Indian dashed into the willows. The red man 
hopped into the wagon, gathered up the lines of 
the now excited mules drove out toward the bluffs 
as far as the wood trail led, unhitched and unhar- 
nessed the mules, gathered up the pistol and shot 
gun, jumpedastrideofone of the animals, and was 
off on fast time over the hills. Meantime the shot 
alarmed the corder and the two matrons who had 
made a rush for the boat and in the excitement of 
embarkation sunk it and nearly drowned all hands. 
About one month later Trader Malnori received 
the following note through an Indian runner from 
Fort Rice, written as the former one, in French, 
with the following English interpretation: 

Fort Rice, (no date) 
Mr. C. Malnori.— Opanwinge has found your mules 
again. Send down a man with $200. Yours with 
regards, F. LaFkombotse. 

There is no record of Malnori's answer, but 
Opanwinge kept the mules. 



45 KALEIDOSCOPK' LIVES 

\' 

About the middle of July, 1S71. while journe\'- 
ing down the Missouri with a single conipaniuii, in 
a precariously constructed bull boat, we hauled in 
at Fort Rice, and walked up to the trader's store 
for the purpose of making a few purchases Here 
and there we noted a few familiar- faces of past 
visits to the post. but for the most part the loungers 
at the trading establishment were strangers. One 
young fellow with a dark skin was masquerading in 
boorish antics with some Indians. Inquiry solicited 
the information that he was a Mexican lad who 
had enlisted as a scout. Another conspicuous 
character — from his manner of speech— was a red 
headed, freckled faced vouno^ man. who was fa- 
miliarly termed "Reddy" hut was spoken of as 
Red Clark. Among a group oi scouts gathered 
near the doorway wasa jmall, tine featured Indian 
boy dressed in blue uniform of w4iich he seemed 
quite proud. This boy was a Sioux, and recently 
distinguished himself in saving the post herd from 
a well planned raid by a war party of his hostile 
countrymen. The raiders suddenly swarmed out 
of a coulee on the apparently unprotected herd, 
but the boy Bad Bird instead of fleeing for his lite 
as many another in his place would have done, 
counteracted the efforts of the hostile raiders frLMii 
stampeding the cattle until help came from the 
fort. The battled warriors tired a few shots after 
the boy. but luckily non<:t taking effect, he rode 
back to the post the hero of the hour. 

In the move of events from that date — some 



ON. niVEK(iL\Ci LINES. -ifl 

two years or more — Red Clark and Bad Bird be- 
came indmate friends, as people saw diem. They 
started out on a trip across the bio^ river one night 
opposite to Fort Rice with j(^vial parthig orood by's 
to the ferryman. They entered the heavy brtish 
beyond the ferryman's ken. together. Clark came 
back alone. The next day Bad Bird's corpse was 
found widi a bullet mark through his head. Clark 
was tried and acquitted for this murder. He plead 
self defence; night had hid the crime and no one 
could prove to the contrary. Besides this the 
dead Indian boy was of . ne race, the judge, jury, 
wiiiiessrs and prisoner of anoiher. 

Five years passed by and Clark stood leaning 
against the counter of a dive in Butte, Montana. 
A stranger entered the place, called for a drink of 
whiskey and threw a silver dollar on the counter to 
the barkeeper for payment. Clark looked up to 
the man who would not stand treat, and clapping 
his open palm across the silver piece, said jocosely: 

"That's mine." 

"Xo." said the stranger, "That is not yours." 

"Thats mine." reiterated Clark with an at- 
tempt at gravity, and the next second a bullet 
went crashing though his skull. 

A closing word about the Mexican lad and our 
curtain falls on these events of Fort Rice's earlv 
history.. Santa, later, developed a penchant for 
wild Indian life and made the acquaintance of a 
Sioux hanger-on named Black Fox, and the two 
connived plan tor a trip to the hostile Sioux, then 
in camp on Powder river. Sanra Anna deserted 



47 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

his command and quarters on a November even 
ing taking his horse, gun and amunition with him. 
besides a well filled sack of provisions. Black 
Fox was also similarily equipped, lacking the pro- 
visions. Riding back on the highlands they made 
themselves conspicuous by facing about from 
the dome of a conical butte and surveying the 
beautiful tinted landscape. The trim post was as 
silent and inactive in its surroundings as a military 
fort could well be. The mellow rays from the 
setting sun shone in glittering splendor from the 
west end of the buildings. The long line of brown 
marked the course of ice conjested waters of the 
Missouri that the crisp air had wrought. Santa An- 
na had probably wondered why his known deser- 
tion had caused so little stir down by the garri- 
son. The soldier still paced his lonely beat in 
seemingly meditative mood; the sound of axes at 
the evening wood pile sounded loud and merrily. 
Loiterers continue walking to and fro in their 
usual i^ait, the tethered ponies nibbling at grass 
roots about the outshirts — or drooping lazily; even 
the shaggy wolf dogs were basking contentedly 
about the red faced scouts quarters oblivious to all 
the living world. Perhaps the thought came to 
the young Mexican how little he was to this globe 
and perhaps the same thought flitted across the 
brain of his sombre hued companion. A black, 
moonless night screened the last act in Santa's 
life p'ay. No rehersal. No need of that. A 
deadly blow — a mangled body and all was over. 
Black l\^x strode int(^ Grand River Agency next 
morning, riding the Mexican's steed and leading 
his own. Proud man of war. Within twelve hours 
he hru! captured a horse and won a feather. 




A Pioneer Home. 



A CHRONICLE OF DOS DSN RANGE. 
I 

T r takes all kind of people to make a world," 
X is a saying as old as the language with which 
it is spoken. In a lesser degree — lessened only 
in proportion as to its material numbers — every 
separate community of the humnn race is diversi- 
fied by all manner and shade of character. 

In the order of creation by the light given us we 
behold a great variety of life — quadrupeds of the 
earth's surface — bu'ds of the air, and fishes in the 
sea. Though all around and about us, and 
breathing the air with us — warmed by the same 
sun of light — subject alike to soccora winds or 
frozen blasts — yet otherwise each and all of these 
diversified kinds of animal life live, apparently, in 
a sphere of their own. Though the strong prey 
upon the weak — the vicious upon the gentle, yet 
in all the generations that come and go the status 
of animal and bird life remain much the same. 
It is only through the agency of man or some 
great convulsion of the earth's surface or ravages 
of some special epidemic, when the equilbrium 
changes. With man as master the propagation 
or destruction of many of these animals, bird or 
fish kinds of creation are subject to his wishes 
and may survive or perish at his will. Entire 
species may at his pleasure or displeasure disap- 
pear in untimely death. But do they go forever.^ 



49 KALEIDOSe'OFlC LIVES 

Does dtath tud alP Go ask ihe dark skinned 
millions of hunK"ins rhat sprc-aJ themselves over 
The tVnile plains (U' Hindoosta!i: alonj^^ the popu- 
lous vales of the cradle of civilized man., the rivers 
[Euphrates, the Indus and the Ganges, or harken 
to the red Indian seers o( the Americas. 

Or to delve deeper with the subject in its pro- 
fundity as such would deserve, ask the intellectual 
oiants of our own race — formost among thinkers, 
or go seek the tombs o\ the sages of all nations 
in all ajjes. who bv their works and bv their acts 
will have told you that these birds ot the air and 
the animals oi the tields, woods and jungle, long 
since mouldering with the dust of other days, did 
not die — but that you. my reader friend, may be 
one o\ them — in the evoh ing changers in the trans- 
migration ot sonls. 

Thus in this human family of ours, we frequenily 
mark the action and even the facial c >untenance 
of some animal of the four footed order. Here 
and there among our kind, we see the industrious 
beaver with architectural skill, tiding adverse ele- 
ment which, thoutrh he could forsee he could not 
hinder. He can build but cannot distroy. He 
will endure suflering but will not revenge himself 
by inflicting suffering upon others. Alas: that 
we have so few human beavers among us. 

Then comes the human porcupine who never 
seeks to harm others until tirst assaulted. Then 
he strikes back with fury. lie resolves himself 
into a catapult, and tiings, at once, a shower of 
sharpened arrows upon his adversaries. 



A CHKOXICLH OF DoG DEX KAXGE. oO 

1 hen we see ihe crafty, pointed eared tox, who 
ihri\ es on his wits — head work, with cold calcu- 
latino^ |X)inis well in hand before he makes his 
deadly spring upon his bewildered victim. He 
relies as much for his success on the stupidity of 
his intended prey as upon the more subtle moves 
of his own cunning. 

Then comes the cat kinds — bom ingrates. Slv, 
soft in tread, gentle-voiced with moonish face, 
pleasant and purring in the presence of those thev 
would des:roy. Through creeping on velvet 
paws. — silent as a fallini> feather, the presence of 
le caiman's sinister designs is often betrayed to 
iliose he would wrong by a softer, subder, sub- 
conscious presence we call a presentiment. — a 
creeping something we can feel and yet cannot 
see. 

Then the mvcetes — howlinor monkev— can fre- 
quentlv be met with, having more enerj^v in voice 
than in action. Then the sloth rotting in his lazi- 
ness, wailing for choice vegetables to ripen — starv- 
ing or sleeping life away in the meantmie. Then 
we see the kakau in its reddish brown, basking in 
the tree shade — pestered by insects until its paws 
become by lapses of brain action almost perpetual 
in motion as though the swinging of arms and 
motions of its hands were the only relief from 
torment. Then the gazelle, *soft eyed, unsuspi- 
cious, innocent: then the antelope, by times 
watchful and wary — by dmes a victim of its own 
curiositv or short siorhtedness. 

The animals above named are but a small group 



51 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

of the four footed beasts typified in human souls, 
if not transanimation is it absorption of souls? 
If absorption is it entailed? And if entailed, is 
the subtle working of the human mind made 
clearer? Transmigration of soul is defined as the 
passage of soul on death of one body into another 
born at the same instant without reference to 
species, kind or kindred. Then wherefrom this 
manifold duplixity of character in one human 
breast. The human beaver of to-day transformed 
into the human wolf or lynx ot to-morrow. Where- 
from, or why so, thepromptingsof these kaleidos- 
copic lives whose duplicity of moves mystify even 
their own minds by inconsistency of action? 

II 

On a January evening, blustry with driving 
snow, in the year 1894, a few lounging guests 
were in a talkinof mood in the setting room of the 
Merchants hotel Washburn, McLean's county 
capital, North Dakota. Matters religious, philo- 
sophical and speculative passed in review with the 
group, until the conversation narrowed down to 
events within county limits and to a historical des- 
ertation on its early settlement and organization. 

"Do you remember G one of our first 

county officers?" queried one of the conversa- 
tionists, who was — at the time — conducting the 
Washburn flourinor mill. 

o 

"Oh, yes" responded another, "he's dead. Died 
several years ago." 

"Not so," said the first speaker, "and I will tell 
you why I know." 



A CHRONICLE OF DOG DEN RANGE. 52 

Thus with the miller's introductory narrative on 
that winter evening, and the writer's after trailing, 
I herewith present places and characters person- 
nel of this chronicle of Dog Den range. 

Ill 

It was In the year 18S3, some months after its 
organization, that the county of McLean experi- 
enced what in popular parlance was termed a 
"boom," viz; a large number of new settlers had 
arrived and made themselves homes upon the var- 
ious tracts of vacant lands that was spread out be- 
fore them, to be had by occupation and a limited 
cultivation of the land. The little village of 
Washburn on the Missouri, previously spoken of 
was headquarters for both the land squatter and 
his more thrifty co-ad jutor the speculator. South 
of that town in the summer of the year above re- 
ferred to. a party of land hunters made camp in 
what was known as Mill coulee, a flouring mill 
being then In course o( erection near its abrupt 
banks on the bench land facing the Missouri. 

Of this party our chronicle has nothing to re- 
cord except In a personal way, the discrlptlve out- 
line in the appearance ot one individual. He was 
about fifty years of age. erect in carriage, blue 
eyes, and hair streaked with silver- He had a 
restless manner and in conversation exhibited 
scholarly mind with a range of current informa- 
tion well In hand. After some conversation with 
the leaders of the county organization his suburb 
equipment In that line suggested him a proper 
person for the office of register of deeds and as 



65 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

river's course, that, in summer days, looked sub- 
limely beautiful. The dark green compact groves 
of oak mingled with groups of the lighter green 
of the ash or lowly willow. Shutting their eyes 
and closing their memories to the rigors of its 
wintry days, the valley of the upper Mouse river, 
would seem a veritable paradise to the summer 
time homesteader. 

It was one of the summer days of I883, that a 
canvass covered wagon with a stout team of 
horses in front, came slowly trailing over the 
prairies from the eastward and halted near one 
of these oak groves of the Souris. The horses 
were unhitched and picketed near by, and the oc- 
cupants of the vehicle — three in number — mean- 
dered to the top of a nearby bluff to look about 
them. Far as their eyes could scan was a prim- 
ival solitude. True, a bird of prey now and then 
darted from some leafy coverlet; a red deer here 
and there went trailing in the open to disappear 
into another clump as quickly as it had come, 
but these incidents alone gave diversity to a still- 
ness as though it was a painted picture spread 
out on an artist's canvass. 

We hear no converse now. We gaze upon, — not 
listening to this trio on the hill. In one we see a 
venerable looking man in the youth of old age. 
He stood out erect with face aglow, with spark- 
ling eyes and arms in constant motion as though 
a battery indicator. His two companions were 
women — mother and daughter — if we judge by 
appearance, one a women of forty or more — the 



A CHRONICLE OF DOG DEN RANGE. 56 

other a girl of fifteen. They, too, had a happy 
look for it was decided among them to here build 
themselves a home. 

Day by day work went on with this trio of the 
wilderness, until house and stables were finished. 
Then they looked about them to find they had 
been followed by other settlers who also made 
choice homes along the Mouse river valley. In 
the year that followed, habits of industry brought 
forth good work. Fields of grain, pasturing cat- 
tle, rooting hogs, bleating lambs, quaking ducks, 
crowing roosters and cackling hens made this 
late v\ilderness solitude seem homelike. 

The venerable head of the trio just described 
was a minister of the Gospel, and rode out among 
his scattering neighbors preaching the good word 
when not busy cultivating his few acres of rich 
and respondent soil. To ride thus among the 
newcomers of the valley, he deemed a duty or- 
dained. To radiate with the happy — to console 
the disconsolate — to lighten dark paths and to 
cheer and to guide the doubting, and lead them 
on a better way, were life lines in this good man's 
work. The tamiliar figure encased in black, with 
long streaming silvery hair; a pleasant nod and 
cheery word for every passer by, linger yet in 
kind memory with many of the first settlers of the 
Mouse river valley. 

VI 

One August day in the year 1885, there came 
moving down upon the. plain from the ridges of 
the Dog Den range, a lone horseman. He was 



57 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

riding about in zigzag trails, seeking depressions 
of land or "draws," as though searching for estrays 
from some herd. Such, indeed, his actions proved 
for the horseman was none other than the hermit 
ranchman fn-m W^insion's ranch on ih(- prairie 
mountains. Me had ne\er visited the valley of 
the Mouse before, but now bo; h curiosity ami duly 
impelled him onward to ihe scatitM'ed and ciisiant 
settlements, where here and there mark of im- 
provements bordering the groves of timber had 
caught his scanning eyes. As he rode near the 
dwellings, the green potato tops — the creeping 
vines of melon and squash — the tasseled corn 
with Its jutting- ears of glossy silk were of more 
beauty and interest to this man trom the Dog Den 
than was any other sight that could have greeted 
his vision. He thoucrht of his larder at the ranch 
on the range, that he had left as bare — almost — 
as the one visited by Mother Hubbard in song 
and story. The memory of the hard dry dough- 
gods, jack rabbit soup and black coffee that had 
kept his spark of existence aflame all the long 
winters and variable summers. I roughton a yearn- 
ing now with all its restraint uncurbed. 

Thus nmiinnting as he moved along, he espied 
ahead of him a neater and more homelike dwelling 
than any of the other homes that he ha(^ yet passed. 
In front of the house a much neater and thriftier 
patch of corn was noticed dian any he had \et 
met with in the valley. 

A woman with a wt-li shaded sun bonnet, stood 
" iiidustrioubly hoeing among the com, oblivious to 



A CHRONICLE OF DOG DEN RANGE. 58 

all surroundings. The man on horseback invol- 
untarily [Daused, saying to himself: 

"I've gone far enough. These roasting ears 
are templing and I must have some. I shall beg 
or buy an armful from that woman." Thus with- 
out more adoo he rode up near where the woman 
was v\orking and told of his desires. Something 
in the man's voice had startled her. She peered 
cautiously from her half closed bonnet at the un- 
kept being before her. "Was it possible? No, 
it could not be." A crimson flush crossed her 
face, but the bonnet folds saved betrayal. At 
length the woman stammered aloud: 

"Are you not Mr, T — ." 

"Possibly, possibly," replied the man with a 
startled look, "and you, and you are — " 

"Mrs. H the minister's wife" she suppli- 

mented, "but you must get down and come to the 
house and see your child. Fourteen years is a 
very long, long time," she said in an absent way. 

VII 

The reverand head of the household was absent 
from home at this time. He was riding out on 
his accustomed circuit preaching faith hope and 
charity to his little world ol followers and be- 
lievers who were always ready to hear the faithful 
churchman expound the good word. 

The ranchman and minister soon after met and 
formed an acquaintance with each other. The 
former became restless with his hermitage among 
the hills, and his journeys to and fro across the 
green stretch of plains to the shady banks of th(:? 



y^ KALEIUOSCOPIC LIVES. 

Mouse, were both frequent and regular. The 
minister on snm(i of thestt visits was "at home" to 
his <^uest, who had explained his frequent appear- 
ance there with a gloomy worded retrospect of 
his bachelor life on the lonely mountains of the 
prairie. 

In whatever way the door of friendship was 
left ajar; by what manner the screen of the bou- 
doir was pulled aside we know not. We know 
only that the minister's wife, heretofore so de- 
votedly attached to her frontier home became 
suddenly discontented. The joys of home became 
distastful, as here presented. A vision — vague 
and unreal at first, but with brighter colors and 
many fantastic shapes as it appeared again and 
again to this woman's wandering mind. To S( e 
and be seen by strange peopleJn a crowdc^d city; 
education for her growing daughter — ease for 
herself and a longing for change — all worked to- 
ward a blending or concentration of shifting ideals 
floating in an orbit. Strangely enough the her- 
mit ranchman, also, saw the necessity of change. 
He, too. would leave the land of isolation and 
abide in a city by the Rocky Mountains. In its 
incipiency this subject of change of residence was 
kept from the head of the family, but as the time 
for action app»'oached, he was gently apprised of 
it. The old gentleman consented to a change of 
home with eir^^at reluctance. He was contented 
and happy in his surroundings and did not want 
to tread hidden paths too far. Had no desires to 
change the known for the unknown. Why not 



A CHROXICLK OF DUG DEN l^AXGE. 60 

leave well enough alone? The tactful wife was 
equal. to every emergency and smoothed down, 
every objection from her devoted husband. She 
kindly planned a way to soften the propqsed 
change. The good minister was advised, in as 
much as he had not visited among his relatives in 
the far east for many years the time was propi- 
tious to do so. During his absence the sale of 
property and the packing up and other incidents 
of a confusing period would be lifted from the 
careworn shoulders of the venerable man. When 
he came again he would find them in their cozy 
home in the Rocky Mountain city. The minister 
was speedily assisted to be off upon his eastern 
journey with many well wishes that the good 
angels protect him on his way. 

VIII 

In due time after much bustle and confusion the 
change of location by the minister's wife and her 
daughter came to pass. A handsome and nicely 
furnished house in the mountain city of Butte had 
been put in preparation for their coming. The 
now thoroughly interested hermit ranchman of the 
Dog Den had preceeded them many days and 
put things in order. 

Time passed happily for the trio. The bracing 
autumn days glided smoothly with the newcomers 
and diversity from their former manner of life 
was hailed with the same delight that would effect 
the deliverance from distasteful task by broken 
shackels to some maltreated bondman. , 

But other changes must come now. The time 



61 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

had arrived when the minister's visit to the far 
east should end by the limitation previously put 
upon it. A letter had been received by his wife 
with the number of train and date of day when 
he might be expected. 

At the promised time the long jointed west 
bound train moved slowly up to the depot at 
Butte. Among the jostling passengers that came 
crowding down from a car platform was an elderly 
gentleman with a nervous manner, clad in a gar- 
ment of sombre hue. He was recognized by two 
persons in waiting seats — the minister's wife and 
the hermit ranchmen of the Dog Den range, who 
arose to meet the minister — for it was he. But 
in the lady's greeting a wifely salution was want- 
ing. She leaned upon the preacher's right arm 
while the politic ranchmen stood escort in wait- 
ing on his left, taking the wearied old gentleman's 
grip in one hand with feigned courtesy tendered 
his arm and the trio for a minute or more walked 
along the sidewalk in silence. 

'*I may as well tell you now," said the ex- 
ranchman from the Dog Den, addressing the 
minister, "this is my wife not yours." "But," he 
went on, "you can have a home with us, just as 
before; you can have a room; you will be welcome 
at our table — only remember she is my wife — not 
yours." 

The sudden and entirely unexpected words 
fell with the force of a terrific blow upon the heart 
of the guilelebs old man. No lurid ,bolt of un- 
chained lightening from lowering clouds could 



A CHRONICLE OF DOG DEX RANGE. 62 

have been more overwhelming — less immediately 
fatal.- His trembling limbs grew weak — his pal- 
sied tongue refused to give forth words, and he 
could only turn and stare appealingly to his wife. 
The woman turned her face from the stricken 
husband as the tender hearted child will turn its 
head from the dying gasps of some dear pet of 
its childish hours. She would soothe but could 
not. She could relent but would not. 

IX 
Back on the Mouse river. Back to the old pio- 
neer farm, the veteran minister had paced his 
way. Let us follow the old man as he stalks 
about the homestead of his creation like a spectre 
on the eve of twilight. Resting his weary head 
upon a stone underneath the leafless branches of 
an ancient oak, in unquieting trance of past 
events we will extract the story that is drawing 
his life away. Let us listen to his mumbling as he 
sleeps: Sixteen years ago a contented paster — a 
faithful flock — a happy home underneath stately 
sycamores, — by the side of a wide, swift flowing 
river. Back to that morning of sorrow when con- 
fiding members of his congregation whispered to 
him the startling details of a crime and the flight 
of the perpretrator; of an abandoned wife and 
new born child bufteiing waves of reproach, neg- 
lect and poverty. Of his own thoughts as to his 
plain line of duty in the premises as a man of 
God, with a natural, sympathetic heart for dis- 
tress in the unbidden calamities of the unfortunate. 
Come one, two, three, four, live or yet six years. 



63 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

and no word from recreant husband and father 
save an uncontradicted word that he was dead. 

Meantime the minister's interest in the forsaken 
woman drifted beyond the sympathetic and had 
ghded into the tangled and inexpHcable bonds of 
love. The forlorn one reciprocated with gratitude 
for effection — attention given tor kindness be- 
stowed. There is no love without affection, but 
is there not affection without love? You who 
are wise in the heart's secrets, make answer. 

X 

It might have been a year or more after the 
closing events just narrated, when an old man 
was noticed boardino- the eastern bound midnight 
express on the Great Northern, at the first station 
beyond the Souris. The lighted train glides rapidly 
across the dark prairies — the grating of wheels — 
the bumping of coaches over the uneven bed — 
the screachin^ of the locomotive whistle at wav- 
side stations or danoer sionals at dubious cross- 
ings, all tend to "make a night of it" for the lone- 
some passenger. After slowing up in crossing 
over the great arches of the Mississippi bridge 
the conductor of the train lound this passenger's 
compartment \acated. A part of a crumpled Ut- 
ter with a late postmark, — and evidently penned 
by a feminine hand, in which the following scraps 
rejointed, tells its own story: 

Dear Mr. H : 1 take my pen to ask may 

we come to you again, i direct this letter to M 

in which neighborhood I hope you now are. 

* * ♦ * . * 



A CHRONICLE OF DOG DEN RANGE. 64 

Ed. is dead. He followed his trade as bricklayer 
after you went awa3^ One month ago ^^esterday, 
he Went to work as usual. In mounting a ladder 
to the scaffolding, he had nearly- reached the top, 
when a fellow workman heard him say "I'm going 
blind," and immediately fell backward and down- 
ward—and was picked up from the ground a man- 
gled corpse. 

Myra sends her love to you. I do hope you will 
forgive if you cannot forget. Please write at once. 
From your heartbroken and sorrowing . 

'Cheated himself by shortening a paid ride/' 
said the train's conductor, carelessly, as he threw 
down the crumpled bits of writing, on the non re- 
appearance of the apparently absent-minded pas- 
senger. 

Out in the blackness of night for a pathless 
walk where anywhere lead to everywhere. Out, 
and on, heartstricken one, — the mantle of dark- 
ness envelope and environ you. Though you 
may have hidden your drossy covering of clay, by 
forest of tamarack; in a bottomless swamp or an 
un-traversed plain, the sleepless special will find 
and uncover you at the finality, and black news- 
paper headlines make record of another "eccentric 
and lonely old man found dead." 




Old Washburn Mill. 




LssriNi; Rations to the Fort Berthold Indiana 

[Fro 11 a Photo by Morrow in 1870.] 



BLAZING A BACKWARD TRAIL 

SOMFi months after the Sioux Indian outbreak 
in iMinnesota on that fateful i8th of August, 
1862, measures were taken by the State govern- 
ment of Iowa looking to a better protection of 
their northwestern border from incursions of de- 
tached war parties from the main camps of the 
hostiles. Gettysburg and Vicksburg had not yet 
been fought in the Southern war, the federal gov- 
ernment was loth to spare troops from the front, 
and the States within the bounds of the Indian 
insurrection were enjoined to raise troops for 
their own protection, beyond some skeleton reg- 
iments officered by commanders who had pre- 
viously experienced some service in Indian cam- 
paigns on the far western plains. In addition to 
two regiments of Iowa volunteer cavalry already 
mustered in the United States service, Col. James 
Sawyer, of Sioux city raised a mounted batallion 
of bordermen for defence along the northwestern 
part of that State, Though originally raised for 
local defense only, in September, 1863 the com- 
mand was re organized and placed upon the same 
status as other volunteer cavalry — and to do duty 
out of the State as well as within its borders 
when called upon. A line of double bastioned 
posts were constructed beginning at the Fort 
Dodge & Sioux City stage crossing of the West 



«7 KALE-iDOSCOPIG LIVES. 

Fork of Little Sioux riv^er and extending in forti- 
fied chain to Esterville on the Minnesota State 
Hne. Beginning with the one at West P^ork 
which was within twenty miles of Sioux City, one 
was established at Correctionville on the Little 
Sioux river proper — one at Cherokee thirty miles 
further up stream; one at Peterson twenty miles 
further along, and one at the Spirit Lake. 

Upon the reorganization of the battallion the 
writer found himself in transfer from an eastern 
command and was stationed at the Correctionville 
post — called Fort White in honor of its company 
commander. The soldier duties were divided 
between detail for scouting service, construction 
and hay making parties. The water was good, 
climatic conditions fine and the exercise exhilera- 
ting and healthful. 

On one of the closing days of September, when 
haying w^as well finished, a group of the soldiers led 
forth some of. their spry and well groomed charg- 
ers (or a trial of speed upon the race course, east 
of the fort. While engaged in this sport, a small 
sized man mourned upon a venerable ill shaped 
pony rode up to the excitable group of money 
changers. Besides his rediculous looking mount, the 
man wore an ill fittino; suit of clothes, topped off 
with an old slouch hat— points well down— and for 
all the world looked the mounted dummy about to 
close a circus performance. Everybody greeted 
him with a laugh in which he seemed to heartily 
join. He bet his money freely upon the racers, 
and, as happened in most cases, lost. 



BLAZIXG A HACUC'vTAR!) TRAIL. r.S 

l~-he ordtM'ly sergeant of the company — :i man 
ot middle age and rotund physiqu*'^, — was an in- 
\'elerate gamester and prided himfudf on his keen 
xvit. Me jokingly offered to run on, foo». against 
the stred of the siraFioer for a five dollar <n'een- 
back provided die stranger done his own jock\ ing. 
As all hands wanted to see the race on, the stran- 
ger cheerfully co\ ered the orderly sergeant's i'lve 
widi a new treasury issue. Much to the surprise of 
all the pony and its rider won by a bare scratch. 

71ie viclorthen rode up t > the company officer's 
quarters, asked to hav(^ his name put upon the 
company's rolls. He gave in his name as Smith, 
but whether the prehx was John, lames or William 
we no, longer rememberA On account of his un- 
der size— having a somewhat diminative appear- 
.ance, or for his little pony, had already been jug- 
handled by the bijys and was known as Pony Smith. 
.Pony, being a round shouldered, bow legged, 
burlesque specimen of humanity, with clownish 
wa)^ was quite a favorite with many, though 
some were victims ot his boorish practical jokes. 
The wri^ter though somewhat chummy with Pony 
was one. of his victims -and a long suffering one — 
had vowed to pick a big black crow with him if ever 
they came together again in this broad old world. 
The orderly sergeant, however, never forgave 
this recruit from the day of the pony-foot race, 
and after many passes of ill-tempered repartee, 
poor Pony Smith was banished over to the West 
Fork, the Botany Bay of the State conij^any chain. 
Here he remained like Napoleon on Helena's inle 



C9 KAl.EIDOSCOPJC LIVES 

until after the Hiustering out of ihe batallion. 

After an absence of over thirty long years. ^the 
writer crossed over the iron bridge across Big 
Sioux river from the west in retrospect. The 
little town of Sioux City — that was — which clns 
te-red around the old steamboat landing stood out 
a magnificent city spread back upon the hills 
Great buildings of brick and marble had supplant- 
ed the log and frame structures of the days of 
the Sioux outbreak. Electric lights and trolly 
cars had run out the street lamp and the omni- 
bus, r 

While standing in wonderment where the old 
Hagy House had stood, I saw along funeral train 
slowly passing up the street. A pioneer judge 
was being taken to his last resting place. Close 
following the hearse — bowed down in medatative 
thought rode a cluster of old white headed men. 
the Bogues, the Hedge3, the Hagys' of long 
ago, — comb gatherers and makers of this human 
hive. In remembering their vigorous physical 
frames and mental push of thirty years before, 
and now gazing upon the listless eyes and fur- 
rowed cheeks of these broken men following one 
of nheir own group to the grave — each as silent 
as the enshrouded occupant of the hearse, I could 
almost fancy their bloodless lips were repeating: 

*'We are passing away, 

We are passing away 

To that great judgment day." 

I had looked in vain for one face in that group 



BLAZING A BACKWARD TBAIL. 70 

— Col. Jim Sawyer^ — and setting myself, dawn oa 
a seat under the varanda of a comfortable bolMry 
its venerable proprietor — feimself a pioneer- 
chequed off time incidents concerning members 
of our old frontier soldier organization that I 
attentively listened to, after aa absence in person 
and lack of all information concerning their where- 
abouts for over a quarter of a century. 

Col. Jim Sawyer had played, hit and miss with 
business many years after the close of the civil 
war. until his worldly possessions were wrapped 
up in the proprietorship of a ferry boat. This 
would have been all right had the boat stayed 
above water, which, unfortunately for the Colonel 
did not. He had stood upon the levee and 
watched his boat go down beneath the muddy 
waves of the Missouri, and himself reduced to 
poverty — the boat being so rickety no company 
would insure. Though the waters had swallowed 
up the remnants of his fortune it had left him his 
grit. His age at that time was about sixty 
years — a time of life when the ordinary man 
drops oat from active life and sits down; a time 
of life for some people thus stricken in misfortunte 
who would have staggered and wilted under the 
strain,- crawled in their bunks and called loudly 
on the old man with the scythe to hit hard a lick 
for keeps. Not so with Colonel Sawyer. By hook 
and by crook he raised a little means and hied 
himself off to the mining regions of Arizonia. 
Ten years later he had been heard from through 



71 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

some financial institution. H-is rating was ai^vay 
up then,— climing close to that of a millionare. 
Our old captain, after whom Fort White was 
named had died a bankrupt in New Orleans. One 
ot our lieutenants was a prominent citizen of the 
neighboring town of Onawa. Corporal Ordway. 
was living happily with his wife and their daugh- 
ters out on Maple river. The orderly sergeant 
had died in a Minnesota town of two much "wo- 
man on the brain." His tormentor, Pony Smith, 
was living somewhere along the Sioux valley, — 
informant did not know just where but thought I 
might meet him iu my travels. Of the Comstock 
brothers, two were dead and one insane. Pioneer 
Perry lived a batchelor hermit on the lower Sioux 
Many others were dead or moved away and never 
where heard from.— and so the list ran. 

A bright and warm luly day after a few days 
of wonder seeing in this big Iowa town, I drove 
out alone in a buckboard rig trying to recognize 
something familiar along the old Fort Dodge 
stage trail. The Floyd stream was passed after 
which a vain look for recognition was had of the 
old Hunkerford place, — once the outward farm of 
the environed settlement. Twenty-nine years 
before I had followed this trail for forty miles with 
but one sheltered house between, and with the ex- 
ception of those at the West Fork crossing not 
a tree or a bush even, to be seen. Nought but 
immovable billows to view in a great prairie sea. 
But on this view^ retrospect, fine farm houses and 
beautiful groves of green trees were to met w'ith 



BLAZING A BACKWARD TRAIL 72 

or noted whcre\er our grer!ling eyes tij-rned the 

pony's and mine. Over on the West Fork, the 
very personation of loneliness in frontier days, is a 
garden now and beautiful to behold. A mile or 
two down from the old State company stockade, 
now placidly sits the town of Moville with long 
trains of loaded cars passing and repassing, sig- 
nalling their presence in a wreath of smoke or in 
the loud screech of the steam whistle, 

A few miles north eastward of the West Fork, 
the abrupt ridges mark a near approach to the 
Liiile Sioux valley, proper. F^very change from 
the primiii\e clays of the borderman was noted 
and every innovation interesting. The sheep 
f](^cks, the hog droves the herds of cattle that 
were feeding upon the hills and vales were once 
we had roamed in quest of the herd remnants of 
the elk and th.e antelope. 

A fine, sleeking looking drove of hogs drew my 
attention, '['he old fellows of the bunch appeared 
languid fr(;m fat carrying and the little chubby 
porkers' tails seemed to curl over their backs 
more proudly than those previously seen along 
the route, so on noting their care taker had a self 
satisfied air, I opened up the conversation: 

• Well my friend you have a large, healthy look- 
ing drove of porkers here." 

"Big drove of hogs you say mister," replied 
the swine herder, "why you ought to see Moon's 
piggery above Correctionvillel" 

Passing further up the deep cut roads I noted 



73 KALEIDOBCOPIC LIVES 

a particularly neat farm house with a suitable ad- 
junct of outbuildings with an inticeing looking 
water trough to a very dry pony. The farmer 
came out from a nearby building on my approach, 
and finding him in a talkative mood, I plied him 
with some questions: 

"Your neighbors all look prosperous here," I 
said, ''they must have good bank accounts." 

''O, no." replied the farmer, "not many — a few 
of our people have some mrmey in bank. There 
is Mr. Moon above Correctionville — he usually 
has a good many thousands deposited with the 
banks — but then he is an exception." 

A further drive of a half hour or more aad I 
sit rigidly from my seat in the buckboard — and for 
a moment scanned up and down the valley of the 
Little Sioux — a strani^er to a familiar land. Two 
lines of railway strung out from a compact town 
where Fort White had stood. Green trees yet 
fringed the river and nestled up in the sheltered 
pockets of the uplands. I made inquiry concern- 
ing the farms and was pointed out a magnificant 
appearing place and fortunately found its propri- 
etor taking his ease in a rocker on the poarch. 

1 introduced my subject bluntly: 

"They tell me you own two thousand acres of 
land here — and two thousand acres covers a great 
deal of soil." 

*'\Vell. yes." replied the landowner "two thou- 
sand acres is all right as far as it goes, but there 
is Moon above Correctionville. — he has seven 
thousand acres of land, and all in one body." 



BLAZING A BACKWARD TRAIL. 74 

Bidding the land owner adieu, I followed along 
the valley road some distance in parallel lines 
with the railway grade, then crossing the track 
and over the iron structure that spanned the 
Little Sioux river facing Correctionville from the 
south. As the dull sounds from the pony's hoofs 
intermingled ?h the stillness of the air with the 
gurgling waters, past memories rose unbidden to 
distress the mind and grate upon the restful heart. 
Memories with all its fitful shadows of gaiety and 
gloom — hope and dispair that had marked the 
day dreams of thirty-three and thirty years before, 
now again brought vividly to mind at the familiar 
sight of the stony bed river, the basswood groves 
and sweet songs of musical birds. Almost un- 
consciously 1 had halted on the further arch of 
the long high bridge and gazed backward and 
across on the opposite shore as though to catch 
one more glimpse of the pick-garbed, pale faced 
maid, who had once in fancy stood with bared 
feet- upon the marginal waters by rock and brush 
to reveal some warning events yet to come. This, 
though but the record o( a dream of thirt}'' years 
i:',one, its rt-vehition had been faithfully perfect in 
all detail. 

Up the road and on a rise of ground where 
p'ort White had stood. What do we see? No 
stockade — no turreted bastons— nor a lo.o- or a 
stone even, marked the spot where the frontier 
fort had stood. Instead, around and about the 
environed plain nestled a town of 2000 people. 



75 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

At one of the larg^e hotels I met an only re- 
minder of my closing experience in early Correc- 
tionville. An old and tottering inebriate, whose 
faltering, self betrayel in our presence.reminded us 
of the old saw *'that a guilty conscience need no ac- 
cuser/'Further in that man's case silence is charity. 

Through the handsome burg and out along the 
Cherokee trail we noted great changes and at a-^ 
bend in the river met a couple of husky boys with 
a small drove of apparently unmanageable steers. 

"Boys," I ventured to remark, "You have a 
very unruly herd to manage." 

''Herd h ," tartly replied one of the lads, 

"go on up and see Moon's big bunch if you want 
to see a herd. 

Passing along through ravines and across cul- 
vereted roads I drew reins in front of Mr. Moon's 
house, to which I had been directed by his neigh- 
bors, and after a critical survey of the Sioux val- 
ley magnate of so many leading parts, made my- 
self known to him, received a generous welcome 
and was his guest for a couple of days. Taking 
a walk with the proud proprietor to view over his 
vast and unincumbered land possessions and to 
see his herds of shorthorns and long longhorns — 
Percherons and Clydesdales — Poland-China's and 
Chester Whites,— and in a daze of admiration for 
all I had seen, — with a burst of inquisitive inquiry 
after all I had known, — patted Mr. Moon with old 
time familarity on his hard round shoulders, in a 
bandying way, blurted out: — ^ 

"Pony — old boy — when did yo'.i hook on to this 
name of Moon?" 



BLAZING A BACKWARD TRAIL. 76 

Out. upon the road again — now over hills and 
in sight of thrifty towns — now down in the valley 
of the almost Indian trail of State company days. 
The only habitable dwelling in those days in the 
valley be*:ween Correctionville and Cherokee — 
distance thirty miles — was the Parry homestead. 
The soldiers were under many obligations to the 
hospitable pair who had here built themselves a 
home. Answers to inquiry told me the old gen- 
tleman had been resing under green sods for many 
a long day, but the old lady then passing seventy 
years survived and was near by, so called for the 
last time to pay my respects to her, and on hchalf 
of my soldier comrades thank her for the kind- 
ness she had ever shown toward us. 

Then loomed up the town ot Cherokee with its 
three thousand people. Ihirty years before, on 
my last adieu to this town less than half dozen 
families comprised its inhabitants, but it was then 
as now a county capital. In those days of the 
sixties, besides the soldier garrison were many 
young men, but only two girls of marriageable age 
in the town. One a modest little maid, daughter 
of die hotel proprietor kept noboddy's company 
but her mamma's. The other young lady was 
delighted with attention from many earnest woo- 
ers. She had engaged hersdf to be mawied to 
the corporal commanding the post, and while he 
was absent purchasing a trosseau for the nuptial 
event, she met the advances of another soldier 
and married him before the return of affianced 



77 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

husband that was to have been. It was a case of 
inexcusable deception on the girl's part as we had 
rendered judgment then, and much sympathy felt 
for the young commander for his misplaced confi- 
dence. I now inquired of some old timers of the 
after days of this coquettish woman, and learned 
she had made a miserable life for herself by her 
misadventure. A few years of unhappy married 
life she had been left to shift for herself, with a 
lot of children to raise and care for. 

As author and publisher of two little books one 
which I was introducing into public and private 
libraries; had been told by a newspaper editor 
there, that a banker's wife was treasurer and gen- 
eral manger of Cherokee's public library, and ad- 
vised my calling on the lady, as perfatory thereto. 

Accordingly, acting on the suggestion, I saun- 
tered wonderingly along a shade-lined boulevard, 
until coming in front of a beautiful and cosily re- 
sidence that looked the ideal banker's home, and 
sent up my card to the mistress of this mansion. 

"So your book has something to say about 
early Cherokee history" the lady said, after I had 
introduced the object of my call, "what is it facts 
or romance?" 

"A little of both, perhaps" I answered. 

"I will get your book for the library," she 
rejoined, "but I guess I was living here in this 
town before you ever you saw it!" 

Then dawned light. Bidding the lady adieu, I 
passed out under the silver maples, drawing on 
a nearly forgotten memory of past events, "I have 
it now*' I murmered, softly "I have been talking 
to this town's first hotel keeper's daughter — to 
•mamma's girl' of early Cherokee.." ' 




GO 
be 

CO 



> 

I— I 
03 

o 
o 

M 
H 



K 

o 

D 
W 



0? TWO QRAVSS Hi TK3 BMCH HILLS- 

DURING the winter of 1S69-70, while passing 
that inclement season among the woodchop- 
pers and adventurers assembled at 'I bi-ghtimber 
Point, now Hancock, N. D.~ I made acquaintance 
with a light limbed fexan cowboy. While born 
and raised on the plains of Texas, the young man 
had p'Jt in some time among the vineyards of 
lower Cilif )rn:a and also a few yv-^ars in the stock 
ranges of eastern Oregon. I'hen an adventurous 
trip across th# n^ountains of Montana to the head- 
waters of the Missouri river, with a short sojourn 
and an ii;kling of life with the professional wolfcrs 
of Milk River Valley. Later lie liad drifted down 
the Missotiri and became a transient in one of 
Iowa's famed towns. 

While in that city by the v/alery border, chance 
lot threw him in the society o( ^ budding maid, 
the daughter of respected parentage — which in a 
short time ripened i.i an aft'eciion that ended in 
marriage, Ihegirl was a native lowan, bloom^ing 
into womanhood early, and at the time of her 
wedding was scarcely more than fourteen years 
of age. 

The young husband had but little of this world's 
goods, and after short honeymoon, in considering 
his circumstances, accepted a (Catering offer from 
a venturesome firm, and hired out as cook for the 



TD KALElDOBCOPiC LIVES. 

reason pAnt^ hundred miles trom the starting point 
in ihe then unhospitable and vaguely known land, 
the r^ainted' Woods country of the Upper Missou 
ri, and in the order of distribution was assigned 
to the lonely woodyard at Toughtimber. 

At the yard in the assignment of quarters, lot 
threw the young Texan and the writer together as 
room mates and while sitting .in front o^ the 
evening (ire in the cook room, he gradually un- 
folded his life s>tory and told how his wife w^as 
won, and dwelt on the ever to him interesting sub- 
ject, long and fondK'. He anxiously counted the 
days that would elapse before the great river in 
front of our stockade would loosen its frozen, fet- 
ters, and pleasantly anticipated the time when 
from the hurricane deck of a returning steamer 
he might get Vv-elcome sight of the city that con- 
tained. — as he tenderly expressed it — "the finest 
little woman in the world." 

Like many others born and raised beyond the 
line of schools on the Texan frontier border, this 
young man could neither read nor write in the 
simplest English. Nov/, of all times, he felt the 
needs of chirographic communication most. 
There were hundred of miles of frozen plains be- 
tween him and his wife, it was true, yet as isola- 
ted as our woodyard was, eastern mail reached 
our door only one week old. The delicate duty 
therefore, of reading and writing answers confi- 
ding letters between husband and wife fell to my 
lot as ihe £equei:[ce of the Texan's neglected 
education. 



OF TWO GRAVES IN THE BLACK HILl^S 80 

Ab the sun grew hig-her in ihe heavens in its 
daily exolulionary course of planet movements, 
and glad spring was being welcomed by the faith- 
ful little harbinger of warmer days — the soft- 
chirping chickadee of the v/oodland, a new theme 
occupied a large space in due young wife's letters 
to her husband. She was abo\it to become a 
mother and her hopes and fears for the event give 
pathos to its wording, and in ano^elic tenderness 
begged that her husband might be witli her in the 
supreme hour. Thus closed the correspondence 
as far as tlie third party was concerned but the 
recollection of those lender epistles from the girl 
wife to her absent husband remain as fresh in 
mind as a memory of yesterday. 

TiiC summer following, the writer of these lines 
chased up and down the great valley in the vicin- 
iiy of the Vc/:t Buford country, bracing up with 
the exhilcrating and pleasurable excitement of the 
almxost daily send off, in Indian scares with the 
astute Sitting Bull and sardonic Long Dog as the 
dread faced jack-in-the-boxes that spring them- 
selves out from the clumps of sage brush or grease 
wood that mark the wallows and washouts of the 
plains surrounding the showy fi'ontier fort which 
bore the honored name of a New Jersey cav- 
alry leader of the civil war. 

At the beginning of Autumn, some nine of a 
party started out in an cpen boat from Fort Bu- 
ford in charge of a deput)' marshal as witnesses in 
a United States court case at Yankton, the then 



81 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

capital of the Territory — over a thousands miles 
bv the river's course. As we drifted along on our 
lengthy trip we touched ast woodyard, post and 
Indian camp, until the familiar fort was reached 
that sat so handsomely on die yellow plain below 
the sluoeish waters of DouQ^lass river. Down 
toward the boat landing we slowly drifed along 
the cut bar, thence to the tie-i.ip. 

Among the first acquaintances that came down 
from the fort to greet us was the young Texan. 
He was a happy man. His wife and babe was 
with him at the post, he told us, and he had the 
post commander's permission to run an eating 
restaurant in connection with the post trader's 
store. 

"You must come up and see us" he said cheer- 
ily to the writer, *'She knows you now; I told 
her all about the letters." 

We then started up to the fort by the "water 
road" crossing the Garrison creek bridge to the 
new restaurant west of the officers quarters. On 
our way along a paiahd item of news was imparted 
to the Texan. A subpoene was served on him to 
appear with the rest of us at Yankton, lie ral- 
lied, but with a sad attempt at gaiety presented us 
to his wife. She was a \ery beautiful blonde, and 
with a neatly dressed, romping child in her arms, 
heightened the color of a pretty picture. The 
shade that was thown across it happily for us, was 
reserved for our departure. The parting scene 
between this young couple, we did not see. — 
Neither did we wish to see. In beino- left with 



OF TWO GRAVES IN THE BLACK HILLS. 82 

her tender babe behind, — she would have neither 
father- or mother husband or brother to protect 
her now. Here wasa hber/ine's opportunity, — and 
also a coward's. There is but little more to say. 
A tongue of deceit — a subtle drug — a trumpted 
up situation — and darkness and despair for this 
child wife. 

A personal friend of the chronicler of these 
pages had occasion to pass some years of his life 
in the Black Hills immediately after the in-rush 
of miners and adventurers succeeding the Custer 
expedition of 1874. Among the incidents of ihe 
early days of Deadwood, the chief town there, this 
friend related the closing account of a life wreck. 
The story pitiful as it was, might have passed my 
mind as many another of its like had done, but 
some personal recollections of an earlier day — and 
to the poor victim a purer and surely a happier one, 
gives painful interest in telling this plain truthful 
story that I here narrate, curtailed somewhat in 
order of abrieviation from the verbal to writing. 

The verbal narrator told how, one wintry day 
he had received information while walking along 
Deadwood' s primitive thoroughfare, that a young 
woman, with scant means was either dead or dy- 
ing in a lowly miner's cabin near the outskirts of 
the town. Thinking over the circumstances of 
her past life — for he, too, had known her long and 
well — induced him to go search that he might 
find her, and if not already dead contribute some- 
thing for comfort in her dying hour. 



s.; K .\i.u:iPosroiMr links 

Shr \v.\s luM vlt'.ul Init Ium Li^l hour h.ul (.\mi\(\ 
On a iroiil.itiv>ji imiUMS •'Iniiik" wiih a trw lat- 
Umc\1 vjinhs. wiihm a v'K>s<^ uhmu scant ot tninish- 
mgs lav tho vounj^ wonum. wnh the pallor ol Jcwih 
last sproadin^; o\ or her oniaciaioil toaiuros 

On a olialr .U liu- briisido ot iho vKnii; iMil sat 
an auondoni -a kMnalo oi another iav'(\ who 
allhouoli taulls tlu^\ niavha\r--ycl tvM unstli 
ish luinisiraiions to tho sick aiul nnt'oiiun iu\iho 
Aunt Sally's aiul Aunt Pnia!\ s ot tho colored race 
oocnpN a distinciion graterulU .u know lc\!i^(\l hy 
tl\o unprejiKliced c\ cm \ where. 

Ainoi)^ the seani uappinv^s sunwiindniv; the 
sick wouKin lay a letter which 0\c^ had rvivlenily 
ceiv^^d (\\m\ some one in answc r to he asking for 
tuiancial aid The s!\ort answc i had loKl ot its 
t'aihirr: — **You * brother says he has no sister/' 

l^n a shelf uith son\e half emptied honles of 
nvedicine. lay a well ihummed copy ot 'MoLev>d 
ofI\ue,' r.nd a p;>gr marker toward the kisi ot 
the b H)k, which place the faithful nurse told nu 
inforn^anr, that her patieiu had l)een frequently 
readii\i; bv fore she havl become sc> weakened by 
sickness as to be unable to hold the little book 
in lv*r hands. The n^arker rested on the closing 
death sctMieof Black's hero and evidently rertec:ed 
the state of her mind at the time: 

"Kin«: Doaili was a rare old feUow\ 
H.0 *at where no s^uu could shine; 

And ho HftOil his hand sc> yollow. 
An) I ourovi out his ooabl^laok wine! 



riicrc ( ;mM' to liini mfmy ;i ni;i if I<',m , 

WlioHc vyvh li;i(l forgot to Hhiuc, 
/\imI vvidovvH with grief o'er Indeti, 

I'of 'I r ;iii('_li ( «»l liin Hlcepy winr! 
Ilmr;ili! Iimr.ili! Imrrnh! forflir^oal hJnck 
wine! 

All < .'line l<» llir r.'iir old t( How, 

Who Imii^Im (I lill hlH {^ycH d»o|)j)r(| hrifx;, 

/\ H fic ^,'iv«- (iKrii his h.'ind ho yellow, 

And picdgrd thcrn, in l>(-ath'H hhick winf»I 

llmr.ih! Inirrali! hurrah! for the coal hiac k 

W i nr !" 

()NI'. d;iy toward ih'- lau<-r part ol May, 
I XX;,, whilr working oij a piece of government 
land fiear Tainted Woods, N. 1), enrleavorin^ to 
seciirr private title l>y followin^^ tlie intent of th(! 
law as to the j)lantin^ and cultivation of yonn^ trees, 
II. y attention was caHed to tlie. apj^roaeh of a man 
( ornin^' hom th<' river, making directly for the placr 
wli' le I was at work. It {)rovr;d tfj he Sunda, (or 
ai hast that is what we will call him in this chroni 
Ic, )a hunter, trapper, scout andlndian fighter of 
than passing repute in a country where the 
thr hns of th(! revolving kaleidescope are ever 
iiinnngovrrin the jumble of the crescents, somcact 
ol heroism or mark that hring sudden and some 
limes bewildering fame to the border adventurer. 
The man before me was an old acquaintance and 
our rr-cognition wa*. uuitual.altliougii nin<: years had 
passed sincc! as camp [>artnerson the trap linf: we 
had parted on Wliite P^arth rivr!r, anrl only once 



( 

mot f 



b5 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

after, sixteen months later at Scott's vvoodyard 
below the Yellowstone's mouth, 1 had bid him 
a last adieu until this meet at the tree claim. 

It was at Scott's yard shortly after our interview 
there that Sunda made his reputation as a very 
quick and dead shot in shooting a sneaking hostile 
who was drawing bead on unsuspecting Deacon 
Hemmingway while the latter was chopping cord- 
wood for Scott in a grove near the prairie. The 
crack of the hunter's rifle and the falling of a red 
painted Indian from behind a tree was the first in- 
timation the startled Deacon had of his danger. 

The next I heard of the hunter was a year 
later on Yellowstone river where a shot from his 
rifle had penetrated the supposed invulnerable 
body of a hostile Sioux medicine man. The war- 
rior was making a "holy show" of himself with 
an idea, evidently, of encouragini^^ his more timid 
companions to openly attack the crew of a steam- 
boat while the vessel was "hugging the shore." 

Still later I had heard that this quandam partner 
of mine had visited Bismarck, and after equipping 
for the northern buffalo grounds; hired a boy, and 
secured a young woman from "across the track," 
for campkeeper, and when all was made ready 
had taken the train west for Glendive, and 
through a newspaper clipping from that point, I 
learned that this strangely selected party of hide 
hunters were in among the last of the nonhern 
buffalo herd and that Sunda had brought down 
7000 buffalo hides as the rc^sult of the first winter's 
shoot the product, mostly, of his own rifle. 



OF TWO GRAVES IN THE BLACK HILLS. 86 

Upon the occasion of this meet at the tree claim, 
after first greeting, we walked back to the old lo^ 
stockade where as two of a party of three we had 
had made winter camp during cold days of the 
months of January and February 1874. Of course 
after so long an absence on different lines we had 
nmtual queries to ask, but it was not until after the 
red sun had sunk behind the high ridges of Oliver 
county that the hunter guest began to tell of the 
events at Red water preceeding the extermination 
of the last of that magnificant band of buffalo de- 
nominated the northern herd. 

Time and place have much to do with the im- 
press of a story. A cabin surrounded with giant 
cottonwoods just putting forth their pea green 
leaves; songs in various notes and cadence 
irom the throats of a thousand happy birds cele- 
bratmg safe arrival in their summer nesting 
grounds; air laden with the fragrance of bursting 
buds and a light breeze wafting from the river 
sounds of the waters' rush by sand bar and saw- 
yer. A propitious hour, surely, for song or story, 

Sunda said he would tell all about the girl he 
had taken west from Bismarck if I had patience 
to give attention. In answer said I was but too glad 
to hear all he choose to tell. Introducing his sub- 
ject, said, the young woman had come up from 
Kansas City on a river steamer. As a native of 
Jackson county Missouri, the hiding place and 
headquarters of several desperate gangs of bush- 
wackers during civil war times, and with such sur- 



87 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

Foundings and invironment, and while yet a little 
girl, she had witnessed the cruel, inexcusible and 
violent death of her father from their hands and 
knew that she had lost a brother also through 
their bloody work. Following this she met with 
betrayal from one who should have been her 
protector; had found deceit where true affec- 
tion should have reigned, and being inexperienced 
in the ways of this selfish world had fallen by the 
wayside. 

My friend the hunter was a fine specimen of 
the physical man. His aq^e at this lime was 
twenty five years. To his question would she 
go with him to the buffalo grounds, her answer 
"I will go with you any where" told of her true 
nature hoping for the best. F'or two years she 
shared every discomfort with her consort on the 
open range. The howling blizzards, the lurking 
w^ar party the veering of stan.peding buffalo herds 
brought no wavering of her loyalty— no word of 
complaint. She was with the man she loved and 
if he choose to be there in savage squalor, it was 
her place also. Twice only he had seen her in 
tears. The boy who had formed the trio acci- 
dently shot himself and she tore strips from her 
dress to staunch the flow of blood from the dying 
boy. Whf^n the lad was dead she sat down and 
cried as if her heart would break. She would 
take the place of the absent mother,— she said, 
as far as in her power, and do the best ihat could 
be done fjr the dead in that wintry wilderness. 



OF TWO GRAVES IN THE BLACK HILLS. 88 

But the last of the buffalo were shot down cold. 
Sun-da alone had killed 10,000. His thoughts 
took a restless turn. His mind wandered to the 
broad Chesapeake the home of his boyhood. He 
became irritable in camp though his brave partner 
must have noticed the change her poor, palpitating 
heart refused to yield. Every rebuff was met by 
pleading eyes. But the hunter finally brought 
his courage to bear and he told her the state of 
his mind. As her share for the indurance of two 
^ears hardship he tendered the twice betrayed 
girl $1000 and at the same time frankly told this 
loyal consort the time had now comt for them to 
part forever. 

'*Sunda, I love the ground you walk on,*' she 
replied "but if you don't want me I'll not follow 
you— I am too proud for that." Then holding up 
the roll of money, she continued; — ''When this is 
gone I am gone.". With these words and a burst of 
tears she was away. 

Some months after this Sunda, received at 
letter from a friend in Deadwood describing the 
tragic end of a girl in a public dance hall. It was 
at the close of a quadrille amidst the dying strains 
of music, a richly dressed girl rushed out to the 
centre of the hall, drew a pistol and fired a bullet 
through her heart before she could be reached. A 
newspaper slip gave after particulars. In the para- 
graph mention was made of the rich dress and glit- 
tering jewels that adorned the person of the suicide 
but that no money was found about her. From 
the description of some mementoes found among 
her belongings, Suuda knew the dead girl and his 
consort of the Redwater was one and the same. It 



89 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

was now too late to make amends and too slow to 
realize that henceforth his heart was buried to the 
world and would linger only for the memory of one 
who had given up her life that she might forget 
the ingratitude of her heart's chosen one. 

Sunda had been setting in the cabin door while 
reciting his story — and at its close the beams of the 
sitting moon falling full in his face disclosed tears 
like glistening beads chasing each other down this 
strongman's cheeks. Oppressive silence followed 
within and without. The lively birds had hours 
before ceased their chirping and twittering among 
the trees about us and the branches that had rubbed 
and swayed with the breeze of the day were calm 
and at rest. Without further words the hunter rolled 
up in his blankets and soon after his troubled con- 
science and aching heart was soothed in refreshing 
slumber—if not in pleasant dreams. 







Dan. Williams, 
First Warden Bismarck Penitentiarv. 



TKS BISMARCK PSNIT3NTIARY. 

SOMETIME during the winter of 1886, the 
writer of these sketches accepted an invitation 
for a few days visit to the North Dakota Peniten- 
tiary. The institution is located within a mile of 
Bismarck, the State capital, and directly along the 
main line of tiie Northern Pacific Railway. The 
invitation had come from Dan Williams hrst war- 
den of the institution and who gave seven years 
creditable service as its first officer. And thus was 
I urshered within these grim walls of rock and 
iron. 

Penitentaries have but little interest to the liv- 
ing world except as places to keep away from, 
and only the morbidly curious or those interested 
in some relative or friend behind the iron gates 
are to be found among the registered list of visit- 
ors, and as a consequence there is no ban to in- 
trusion when not in interferance with the strict 
decipline which must never be relaxed or lost 
sightof about a penal institution. 

The Bismarck penitentiary was built in the year 
1885, and consequently at the time of my visit 
everything about the premises was neat and clean 
with an air of freshness prev^ading thereabout. It 
is said a preceptible feeling of incomprehensible 
gloom prevade the mind within the walls of an 



91 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

ai^ed prison — a retlex as it wert^ of tht^ hroocMiio^ 
iniiuls and achino^ hearts whose impress were left 
within the sunless walls that had environed them. 
As old nurses or attendants at asylums for the 
insane are known to frequently become maniacs 
themselves throu^j^h some strange transmission 
or contagion, so too, attendants and keepers of 
prisons by some mysterious influence loose men- 
tal balance and in after tin.e are controlled by 
criminal instincts strangely at variance with their 
former action and which frequently ends in a 
suicide's grave or a felon's cell. 

A life sentence within penitentiary walls is but 
a Hfe burial to the unhappy mortal whose trans- 
gression or misfortune forced it. Old accquain 
tances fall away and forget or class him with the 
dead and in his isolation, has no chance to form 
new ones. He seldom sees the sun moon and 
stars. No pure fresh air; no green grass; no 
leafy foliage; no beautiful flowers save those 
oderless ones upon the casements about the 
naked prison walls. 

Some months before my visit to the Bismarck 
institution there had been a young attorney from 
a neighboring State, incarcerated and serving 
time in the Sioux Kails penitentiary,— and had 
been placed there through the instrumentality of 
his wife, — a heartless and extravagant woman who 
had soutrht this means of riddino^ herself of 
her husband for another she had already selected. 
The laws of the State gave her the right of divorce 



THE BISMARCK HKNITENTIARY. 02 

tliroiii^h the courts, ruicl chance. — opportunity and 
inherent depravity and subversion of her better 
self — did the rest. 

During my short stay at the Bismarck peniten- 
tiary a case just the opposite of the above came 
under my observation which offset the discredit 
l)«ought on the sex. and wifely loyalty by the 
Sioux Falls woman. A young man convicted of 
homicide and sentenced to four years hard labor 
within its uninviting walls. He had some time 
before his trouble married a m >st estimable young 
and beautiful girl, the petted daughter of wealthy 
parents and of high social position in the Hawk- 
eye state. From the hour of the beginning of 
her husband's misfortune, she devoted her whole 
time and a large portion of her wealth to save 
her youthful husband from conviction in the court 
and failing, hung about the cage of her imprisoned 
mate as would a bluebird or robin red breast, ever 
ready to minister to his wants and prove her un- 
selfish devotion save when the cold hand of disci- 
pline and the stern and rigid rules of the prison 
forbade. Through her husband's good behavior 
and her own persistent efforts in his behalf she 
was rewarded at last. A change in public opinion 
gave opportunity for the acting governor to ex- 
tend his clemency, so a full pardon was heartily 
approved, and the now happy young lady led 
forth her husband, past barred windows and iron 
Goors, a freeman. The glad wish of all who were 
witnesses to the closing act of this drama went to 
the yoimg people, and the hope of those whose 



\):] KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVKS 

licarts were enlisted, that this you no hnsixiiul 
would never asi^ain ^^ive occasion to so try the de- 
votion of his taithhil wife. 

There is seldom a conviction oi a criminal but 
what entails siiftering more or less upon' his or 
her innocent family or friends. It is the thought 
of this — even under dire distress or grt-at provo- 
cation — that often stay the arm oi the passionate 
or reveni^efully disposed But. then again, there 
are those blinded to all consequences — the l^low 
was struck — the deed was done, and sc<-*nes like 
the following that came under my observation 
during this visit, is too often in line with the after- 
math: 

A \oung man from the eastern part ot the State 
had been conxicted for mansl.iughter aiid sen- 
tenced to twelve N^ars hard labor in the the pen- 
itentiary. His uncle was the head o\ one o\' the 
most.^widely known oi Minnesota busmess houses 
and-his fatiier. too was a wealthy and influential 
man. 1 lis social [H^sition was also of high order. 
b^imous and high priced lawyers had been retained 
at great expense, yet thanks to an honest jury and 
:vi»v vipright judge, justice in this particular case 
was not altogether thwarted, lie was now in con- 
vict's garb, and the venerable careworn old lather 
had come to bid him good-bye. It was Sunda\-. 
ixuk] services wi-re gvMUg on. — the prison choir 
commencedi to sing, accompanied by the solemn 
toned organ. — 

•'Oo they miss me at liome do thev miss me 
' r would- be an ass\n":inee most deai-. 



r}\h] HISMAIU K PKNn KNTIAIIY. !) I 

To know thai this inoinciit soinc lovtMl one, 
Were saying- I wish lie wcrc^ hc^rc'' 

'\\> f(H^I that the ^roii|) at th(^ fin^sidc^ 
Wen^ thinking of rrn^ as I I'oairi, 

Oh, y(^s 'rwould ix' joy h(^yoiHi iiK^asure, 
To know that they miss at me liotrie. 

Wlu'ii twilight a,p|)ioa('h(^s, the stvisoii 

That (UHT is Harrod to song, 
l)()(;s soirK^ ono repciat my name over, 

And sigh that 1 tarry hcj long? 
And is there a chord in the music, 

'I'iiat's missed wlien my voice is away. 
And a (diord in each lieart that awaketh 

Regret at my wearisomi^ stay? 

* + + + *•+ 

Do tliey miss mc^ at horruv -do they miss me 

At morning, at noon, or at night? 
And lingers one gloomy shade round them, 

That only my preH(^n(!(i can light? 
Are joys less invitingly welcome. 

And pleasures hiss hale than he fore. 
Because one is missed from the circle, 

Because I am with them no more? 

The sad tones of the organ r>eenied to go to 
the father's heart, for after casting his eye upon 
the troubled features of his boy he turned his face 
to the wall and burst into a Hood of tears. "Dh^ 
am I crazy, — oh, am I crazy," he said as he rocked 
his body to and fro in mental anguish. I could 
stand it no longer and passed out of the room. 

Early one morning a lett(*r came up for the 
warden's inspection from the cell room. It was 
from a convict who said in substance that this was 



95 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

his second term in prison, that his lather had 
died in jail^ that his mother was now serving at 
JoHet, and that his only brother was also serving 
a long term at Fort Madison, Iowa. 

**I am bred and born a thief," he went on, and 
if free to-morrow I could not help stealing. As 
I am no use and all harm in the world, I may as 
well die, and to that end have pounded up and 
swallowed nearly a pint of glass. There is no 
help for me now. If there is a hell and I go thert^ 
it will make but little difference if I go sooner than 
I mioht. If there is a heaven and I oo there, the 
s oner I go the better. And if there i- neither 
heaven nor hell, it will make no difference any- 
how." 

The warden instantly telephoned for the prison 
physician, and with a deputy warden hastened 
down to the cell with a quart of oil, pried open 
the jaws of the would be suicide, and poured the 
contents down his throat. By a miricle his life 
was saved, thou!^d-l he had to be closely watched 
from making another attempt when an opportunity 
presented. In se.irching the prisoner's cell noth- 
ip<-T particular was f )u;)d. Trie last two verses of 
Cowper's "Castaway" were pinned on the wall. 
The Castaway, it will be remembered, was the 
last production during ihe last lucid interval of 
that unfortunate poet. We quote the two verses; 

'T therefore purpose not or dream, 

Disc-anting on his fate, 
'Yo i^ivc tlu' niehnu'lioly theme 



THE BISMARCK PENITENTIARY or, 

A more enduring- date; 
But misery still delights to trace 
Its semblance in another's case. 
''No voice divine the storm allay 'd, 

No light propitious shone, 
When, snatch 'd from all effectual aid, 

We perish'd, each alone; 
But I beneath a rougher sea, 

And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he." 

Amontr the outside of gate or trusty prisoners 
was one Mike Finnegan, with a face of Hibernian 
cast. Michael's acquintance was not difficult to 
acquire, nor was he backward in exploiting on the 
misadventure that caused him to "do time" in 
the penitentiary. He had been "put over the 
road," he said by way of apology or explanation, 
for "unlcjosning Teddy Roosevelt's skiff." He 
explained further that himself and partner had 
made a miscalculation and supposed the nervy 
New Yorker was an ordinary eastern tenderfoot, 
and it he missed his nicely painted blue boat on a 
stormy day, would wait for the weather to clear 
up before the drifts were examined down stream. 

"But that's where our miscalculation come in," 
went on the \ erboose Finnegan, "You see we 
wanted to trap and shogt beaver while the Little 
Missouri was in flood, and didn't have much of a 
boat, so concluded to swap sight-unseen with this 
Medora ranchman. Of course it was night and 
we couldn't see — and the owner was in his dreams. 
Well the worst storm 1 ever got cau^^ht out in 
rounded us in at the mouth of Cherry, and we 



i«7 



KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 



went into camp. My! how it sn(^\ved and the 
wind howled '\\'(^'re all rioht here Bully Boy. said 
my pard. and 1 thougrht the same thing — without 
talking. Supprised ynu might say — wasn't we 

thoucrh— when that d d New \'orker cov- 

ered us with his guns for a hands up. What 
could we do with our flukes wet and full of mud, 
our clothes ringing wet and minds preoccupied. 
What would you have done? The New Yorker 
o^ot the best of us — and here I am." 




FROM WSST TO EAST- 

AI' ri{I\ having ualclied from ih(! galleries of 
the hall ot Representatives, the pr. ceedings 
of the North Dakota constitutional convention 
troni the opening to tli(- closing clay, in July, 
I889, 1 prepared iov a lono projected trip to the 
Atlantic's coast lands after an absence ot twenty- 
two years, nearly the whole of which time had 
been passed in isolation on the j)lains or wood- 
lands of the Dakotas. It was, therefore with a 
strange, half forsaken feeling, when I took a seat 
in an eastern bound passenger train at the Bis- 
marck depot at the hour of midnight, and passed 
swiftly from the slef^ping city, i\\u\ through long 
stretches ot silent, sparcely settled prairies. James- 
town at the crossing of the historic old Riviere 
Jaques, is passed at sunri.-e then Sanborn, next 
Valley City and later on the broad expanse of the 
Red River Valley, the greatest wheat growing 
district in the world. On eastward the train surges 
and thumps until the beautiful Detroit Lake is 
seen — the dividing line between the timber and 
prairie lands. Brainard on the Mississippi is 
reached; cars and directions are changed, and the 
train glides like a section serpent through the 
dark forests of pine and tamarack that mark the 
country bordering Lake Superior the greatest of 



99 KALEJDOSCOPIC LIVK8 

our inlaiKl lakes. A few Isolated lunUjernien; 
some railroad employes scattered at intervals along- 
the route, and here and there the brush lodge of 
a forlorn group of the red Chippeways gave thc^ 
scenes a variable turn aj we were hurled along 
until sighting the vast watery expanse, and the 
life and bustle of the "Zenith city of the unsalted 
seas." 

Another day, and as passenger on the hnr. 
steamer China, we were plowing the pine tinted 
bosom of the laro^est chain of fresh water lakes in 
the world. Familiar, as I had been as a seeker of 
information concerning this region — had delighted 
in tracing the details of early explorations and the 
varied careers of its first explorers, my imaginative 
ideal of the country as dreamed over fell far short 1 
of the real as actually observed. Eleven hundred i 
miles by fast steamer — traveling night and day, 
sometimes out of sight of land, and even then 
stopped short of the terminal of the lakes' chain. 
The hottest days of July and August never change || 
the temperture of the deep waters of Lake Superior 
— always ice cold. Heavy pine forests line its 
shores, and as we skirted the American side some 
lurid conflagrations were in sight and dense clouds 
of black smoke enveloped us as we moved swiftly 
along. Mackanaw, old St. Mary's and other 
places of historic interest were carefully scanned, 
and the changes from early historic times noted. 

As the boat meandered through the narrow bed 
of the St. Clair river highly cultivated farms were 
seen on either bank; but more beautiful to me 

L.cfC. 



FROM WE8T TO EAST. 100 

than stately mansions or rows of tasseled corn 
were the Hitle low limbed broad leafed apple 
trees the sight of one I had not witnessed in twen- 
ty two years. Passing Port Huron; passing Bri- 
tish Sarnia; passing historic old Detroit, and the 
boisterous waters of Lake Erie is reached. On 
sped the China signaling passing vessels by night 
and by day. Erie city is reached and passed; 
Cleveland is passed, and on the seventh day the 
port of Buffalo city is entered; the steamer aban- 
doned^ and an enjoyable trip ended — and the only 
regretable incidents while in the good steamer's 
care were the blackmailing insolence of its porters. 
Another* ride in the cars and a stop for a day's 
recreation around the shores of Canandiaguai, one 
of the most picturesque of the many beautiful lakes 
in western New York. Then, again riding behind 
the screeching locomotive, passing the lights of 
queenly Elmira at the midnight hour thence down 
the deep cut valleys of the forest-lined Susque- 
hanna until Pennsylvania's capitol came- in sight — 
thence through the rich farm lands of the "Penn- 
sylvania Dutch " the thriftiest of America's farmers 
and peop!e as a class who love the comforts of 
home life as glimpses from the car window reveals 
the plain and unpretentious though roomy dwel- 
lings, large barns, numerous outbuildings and 
cleanly cultivated tields and gardens. Through 
Lancaster and across the stagnant Conestoga. the 
swift Octorara, the stony bedded, bubble-chasing 
Brandywine, when West Chester, the Athens of 
the Keystone State is reached. Here, twenty- 



101 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

eight and thirty years before, the writer, asahope- 
fiil typo labored on the old Chester County Times, 
long since among the grand array of newspaper 
"has beens." The town then as now the county 
capital — but in those days a model little towii of 
3,000 people now numbering 15,000. Then the 
town had four modest weekly papers — now three 
ambitious dailies, and some half dozen weeklies to 
prod them along. On the morning of my arrival 
in West Chester, a reporter noting a contractor's 
crew on the construction works of a railroad en- 
tering the town, after explaining in his paper that 
in nativity most of the crew were either Italians or 
Hungarians asked in wonderment, "Where are 
the Irish? Twenty years ago the railroad consiruc 
tion crews were Irish, now you seldom see one on 
the works." I could not answer then, I was a 
strange there But I could have answered a little 
later on after having made a few trips across the 
county, where the railroading Irish were. They 
were in possession of s(mie of the best of the 
Quakers' farms. 

Across the county by easy rambles presents 
new scenes and recalls almost forgotten events of 
an earlier day. Passing along roads lined and 
shaded with cherry, apple, peach, pear and the 
tall chestnut; beautiful gardens and conservatories 
filled with ferns and flowers, and fields of tasseled 
corn and sweet smelling "second" clover entice 
the strolling reviewer in tireless walks. Passing 
gloomy Long wood and its associations; passing 
Bayard Taylor's Cedercroft mansion — silent now, 



FROM WEST TO EAST. I02 

almost as a churchyard. Down along Toughken- 
amon h.ills, in whose primitive groves the writer in 
boyhood days "played Indian" by camping out 
amid leafy boughs or hshing around the old stone 
bridge. How changed in thirty yearj! Two rail- 
roads interseciing here — two towns, marble, stone, 
lime and kaolen quarries. On down over the 
hills of New London where the old brick academy 
stands as unadorned as in the earlier days of our 
disciplined, student career there. 

Down among the laurel crowned hills oi the 
Elk creeks that send their clarified waters into the 
broad, briny, Chesapeake bay. Among these hills 
and vales, we rest. Here, memory, kind or un- 
kind, in shifting moods, bid us linger. Changes 
in forty years! The hills and valleys, creeks and 
rivulets remain much the same; but in places hills 
shorn of their timber cover; old homesteads either 
remodeled, or been blotted out altogether and 
succeeded in many cases by more pretentious 
edifices and strange designs that mark the wealth 
of some new owner; but more often the case, 
smaller and less pretensions dwellings dotted 
about here and there that record the subdivided 
farms. The chubby faced school boy and his dim- 
ple faced, rosy cheeked companion, have reached 
the time of wrinkles and grey hairs, while their 
places at the scholars desk or under the swinging 
vine is occupied as of yore, and laughter, tears 
and song are heard on the school's play ground 
with the same hilarity or pathos, as forty years 
before. But save now and then a whitened head, 



103 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

the man and matron of middle life of our boyhood 
days, have passed to the narrow enclosure that 
mark the silent city of the sepulchered dead. 

Though a prosaic land and prosaic people, the 
robed chameleon of romance, here as elsewhere, 
tinge the lives of those who have became drawn 
into the charmed vortex of its mysteries. Over 
on the Maryland side of the State line lived an 
old couple. Being childless, they were solicited 
by members of an orphans' aid society to undertake 
the care of two little waifs that had been aban- 
doned to the world's mercy and rescued as found 
lings in the streets of the great city by the river 
Delaware. The charitable kind hearted old folks 
accepted the trust, and the children though at first 
when thrown in each others company were stran- 
gers, learned to be inseparable in their friendship. 
The foster parents were kind, the children grate- 
ful. Work around the farm was light in their 
more tender years and they had the advantages 
of regularly attending an excellent neighborhood 
school. As the children grew up together they 
not only learned to respect and love their foster 
parents but to adore each other, At the time of 
the writer's visit the boy and girl now man and 
woman grown, still cling to the old homestead, 
which they had beautified and adorned. They 
had been dutiful children loyal in devotion to the 
unselfish benefactors, and when life's evening 
closed calmly around the good foster parents; they 
gave the youthful pair their blessing, had enjoined 
ihem to wedlock and willeci them the farm 



FROM WEST TO EAST. 104 

On the Pennsylvania side of the state Hne and 
within less than a mile of the homestead we have 
described, lived another kindly pair, well up in 
years, and childless, also. This farm, too, was 
beautifully located on the foggy lined banks of the 
Little Elk creek. The farm house surroundings 
were shaded with orchards of apple, cherry, peach 
and pear trees. Groves of walnut, chestnut, 
stately populars and spotted barked butternuts 
side the creek boundaries. In summer days the 
garden walks lined with flowers which out from 
their sweet fragrant bulbs and the white clover 
lawn, gave joy to the industrious honey bees that 
were domiciled in a circle of hives on benches 
within the garden enclosure. 

An orphan's aid society, here too visited as a 
promising field, and had prevailed upon this good 
couple to take to their home a little girl waif, — a 
tiny drift as it were, from the g^reat human stream 
pouring out from the "city of brotherly love." 
Never could a homeless child have fallen in gen- 
tler hands than this blue eyed delicate babe, when 
it came to the home of the guileless, tenderhearted 
farmer and wife, A pretty face, a sunny temper, 
she brought joy and sunshine with her entry into 
the home of her ''new papa and mamma," as in 
exhuberance of childish glee she named her lov- 
ing guardians. 

In quiet and peace the early years sped on in 
this orphan girl's home on the Elk farm. No 
child of fortune could have been more petted, 
though to others the gorgeous show of wealth 



105 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

might liave been lavished with niort^ prodigal 
liands. Such was the little maid's life until she 
reached her fifteenth year, She grew up a fragile, 
delicat'" blond, "a shy, demure appearing little 
Quakeress," — her neighbors said, — when they 
told me the story. 

Across the creek, less than a mile away from 
the little girl's home lived another neighbor — 
good kind old souls that the writer remembers in- 
timately from his earliest day. The man, his wife 
and their family of children owned and cultivated 
a little farm the right and title to which they had 
earned by economy and hard work. One of the 
two boys of the family was employed by the neigh- 
bors whom we have just discribed, and it was in 
this way and during trips to school in which both 
traveled the same beaten path across lots, that a 
friendly intimacy sprang up between the rugged 
lad and the little blond maid from over the way. 
Thoughtful, kind acts; lugging her dinner pail or 
books, won its way by degrees until she regarded 
his presence a pleasure either in public gathering 
or in the quiet duties of the farm. Attentions 
begun in this way so often follow along the line 
of natural law, that drifts into the inexplicable 
depths of the very soul of being, beyond the 
rescue of, and w^here the power of mind avail not. 

The fragile, gentle minded girl, lonely from 
absence of childish companionship, in the nature of 
the sympathetic heart, would entwdne with a tight- 
ening coil the object of her girlish adoration. 
The brawny, roistering boy with the inexperience 



FROM WEST TO EAST. 106 

of youth, ignorant of the SLibtlery of the world's 
manifold ways, could not have given much heed, 
but the girl, unaware perhaps, or unable to stay 
the promptings of a tender heart had centered her 
affection on the farmer lad, and in the trancience 
of mesmeric swifcness. had parsed out of her reach 
or recall. An uncontrollable yearning for the 
i:id\s presence, the subtle undehnable gratings in 
her breast, and every fanciful slight from her boy 
lover, threw her in morbid repinings, and all the 
kindness and care of her foster parents could not 
rescue her from a leihergic state of mind into 
which she had drifted. The bright lustre of the 
eyes, the hectic, flushed cheeks, spells of melan- 
choly that marked the girl's condition hastens our 
story to its end. 

The parents of the young man, (for time was 
passing,) had intervened. He was sent out in a 
western state and asked to live and forget, while 
it is said the girl was frankly told that her unknown 
parentage was the abrupt and unscalable barrier 
that must end forever her hopes of becoming 
"John's wife." It was even said that John, him- 
self, long before, had unguardedly told her the 
same, and this was the dead secret eatino^ her life 
away, though she had striven so hard to forget it. 

The young man was obedient to his parents; 
forgot all. and married in the west But this 
information was kept from the stricken and de- 
serted girl. Her time on earth was short now. 
To every greeting by kind neighbors she would 
jjcrface her remarks: "Has )ohn come." or 



107 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

"Why don't he come to nie, 1 am so lonely?" 
Evasive replies fell heedless. She was hoping 
against hope. In her sick room when unable 
from weakness to arise from her bed she asked 
to have her pillows so arranged that she could 
look out of the window to "see John a coming." 
Out of the window she peered day after day across 
the woodland strip that divided the farms. One 
by one, the yellow, seared leaves dropped from 
the intervening trees; the neighboring house came 
in view through the naked branches, but no fami- 
liar figure was seen, or no familiar footsteps heard 
along this pathway, and weary with watching and 
tired out with ceaseless waiting the drooping girl 
sank exhausted in her last, long sleep. 





o 
W 



Pi 

o 



<3 






s 



LITTLE BSAR WOMAN. 

UCH of our readers who may have perused a 
copy of HpNTiER AND Indian Life, will re- 
member in a passage in the sketch, — The Letter 
in Cipher, — some account of the murder of Carlos 
Reider, but more familiarly known among his En- 
glish speakinor acquaintances as Charley Reeder, 
a German woodyard proprietor in the lower 
Painted Woods of the Upper Missouri Valley. 
The tragedy happened at Reeder's stockaded 
cabin near the river's east bank, opposite to the 
present site of Mercer's ranch, on the morning of 
the I ith day of June, 1870. 

At the time of his death, Reeder was married 
— in the Indian way — to an Aricaree-Mandan 
dame, from which union a girl babe came forth to 
draw their mutual love, and at the time of her 
father's death the child was about four years old. 
The Aricaree name given to the litde girl — Pah- 
nonee Talka, or as interpreted into the English 
tongue — Prairie White Rose, — but in the order of 
abbreviation, she was called plain Rosa by her 
tond father. 

In memory of the air castles in which Reeder 
had enthroned his child in his moments of good 
cheer and happy day dreams in that cabin among 
the painted trees — and before cruel fate and evil 



109 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

passions sent him to realms of the unknown— the 
writer of these Hnes felt himself interested enough 
in the child's welfare to try and have her parent 
consent to starting the little one off with the first 
batch of red children sent to the Indian schools at 
Carlisle and Hampton Roads. But rhe mother 
— through lack of confidence in the outcome — 
was prejudiced and obstinate and thus the matter 
ended. 

With the closing out of a trapper's life the 
nece ssity ol the writer's frequent visits to the Aric- 
aree Indian camp at old Fort Berthold had ended, 
and it was only occassionally after that date 1 could 
hear from mother and child. Had learned that at 
the age Oi thirteen or fourteen, the girl married a 
young Aricaree, whose principal characteristics, 
as I remember him, was of the dudish order and 
who seemed to give more thought to the niceties 
of personal appearance than the practical affairs 
of everyday life, and as a sequence, although 
taking a "land in severaly" claim on the bench J 
land facing the coulee of hour Bears and builded ^ 
himself a house — its construction followed in dis- 
criptive text the home of the Arkansas traveler. | 
As a consequence an early winter storm caught 
them unprepared to withstand its Arctic fury, and 
as sequel to all, the child wife was found in the 
throes of childbirth, in isoladon and with bitter 
cold to indure. Rosa's mother had but recently 
been buried, and none but a decrepit old grand- 
mother was with the child matron to see a little 
duaghter born and the young mother die. 



LITTLE BEAR WOMAN. 110 

Here my information about the mishaps of the 
Reeder family had closed. But after returning to 
North Dakota in the spring of 1892, from an 
eastern tour of some years duration, I made a 
trip to the new Indian Agency at Elbowoods. On 
the return early in May, was caught in a furious 
snow storm, and in blindness, myself and pony 
half famished bumped up against an Indian house 
near the bluff opening at the Coulee of Four 
Bears The domicile was occupied by Medicine 
Shield, an hospitable Aricaree and his venerable 
helpmate who pride 1 herself in being a sister of 
John Grass, a leader among his people and Chief 
Justice of the Sioux nation. This woman had 
native intelligence of a high degree and an ex- 
traordinary memory for details, some of which 
have already appeared in various items of historic 
interest^ in preceeding pages of this work for its 
reader's edification. 

During my comfortable stay there, shielded 
from adverse elements without, I gleaned much 
passing information of some local happenings 
during my many years absence from the Arica- 
rees. Among other particulars the story of the 
Reeder family was brought out in detail, and was 
told that if I would sometime call at the large 
school building at Elbowoods, Reeder's grand- 
dauo^hter could be seen there. On my next visit 
to that place, through courtesy of Superintendent 
Gates of the Agency boarding school, I was 
shown a pleasant, olive faced little girl, known to 
that institute as Lottie Styles, and in a later visit 



11 J KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

the Superintendent supplemented his interest in 
the writer's curioiisity, by having the young Miss 
brush up her hair and stand upon the green for a 
glance at the camera. 

While watching this blithesome little maid upon 
the prairie sward, dressed so nattily, — all smiles 
and all sunshine, — my mind went back to the 
spring snow storm of five years before, when 
Medicine Shield's wife had told me for the first 
time the early child life of Little Bear Woman, 
and r<"membering it well, felt pleased now to bear 
witness to the evolvin<3 confast. 

In her story of these intervening days, the 
Medicine Shield woman said at that time among 
the Aricarees, deaths were both frequent and 
numerous, and that the sudden passing away of 
Mrs. Reeder and her daughter Rosa, was almost 
unnoticed among members of their tribe. The 
shriveled and nearly sightless great grandmother 
to Rosa's child — herself neglected by her kindred 
in her old age and decrepitude, and apparently 
forsaken by all the living world— took her pre- 
cious charge wTapped in bits ot blankets to an 
abandoned and almost uninhabitable dirt covered 
lodge situated among the fast disappearing group 
of decaying habitations that marked the site of 
the last village connecting the Mandans, Gros 
Ventres and Aricarees with the associations of 
their dreamy past. 

Cooped in her dark corner, as the days passed 
one upon another, this broken belldame with the 
precious mite of inheritance bundled in her lap — 



LITTLE BKAK WOMAN. 112 

sat in silence save now and then a plaintive native 
ditty that came from lips of parfieshe, to quiet the 
restless babe. Her palsied arms sv^aying to and 
fro served as cradle, rocking baby to sleep in its 
fitfull periods of unrest, and anon her fleshless 
and withered hands smoothed the fevered infant's 
cheeks in sickness, or caliced and bony fingers 
stroked down its temples in the glow of health. 
The tattered couch of discarded rags that could 
no longer be used by the young and the proud, 
had been idly tossed to her for such comfort as 
could be made of them for herself and the little 
pinched faced elf, that she hugged so tenderly to 
her cold bosom. From her nest of gloom and 
shabby poverty the old woman's mind often 
wandered to other scenes of her own young girl 
life at old Fort Clark, or along the banks of 
Rees Own River. Through the cracks and 
crevices of her mouldy lodge roof, she beheld the 
great firmanent and found a name for the nest- 
ling babe — Plenty of Stars, — although the un- 
kempt hair and dirty face that greeted the child's 
first toddling into the presence of gamins of ad- 
joining lodges, earned for itself from her teasers 
the sobriquet — Little Bear Woman. 

As time sped slowly on giving strength to the 
young and bringing weakness to the aged, in this 
lowly home of the Aricaree quarter, there came a 
day when out from cold and clammy arms a 
healthy, though tear-stained little brunette maid 
was lifted up and away by interested though tardy 
helpers, for the chastened spirit of the good old 



113 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

soul that had watched over Little Bear Woman 
so lovingly and so tenderly, had gone forth to 
join the happy villagers in shadowy lands where 
hunger, neglect and distress are unknown, and 



ai?"e not counted. 








Sioux Village on the Yellowstone. 



I 



THE TWO 2TRANGSR2. 

ONE evening- about the 20th of June, 1868, a 
group of guests including the writer, sat in 
the office of the old hotel with its varying names 
of Ash, International and the Merchants, then 
hostel headquarters of Yankton, Dakota's terri- 
torial capital. Supper was over, and the loungers 
were taking their ease. About this time, a young 
man sprang nimbly in the doorway, and asked for 
the proprietor. He seemed about twenty-four or 
twenty-five years of age, of medium size, dark 
grey eyes, smooth shaven face and dark head of 
hair enclined to curl. His round full face had a 
clerical cast, and the cut of his clothes — if they 
had not such a seedy, threadbare look — would 
have solified this impression. On the landlord's 
appearance the stranger asked for supper, break- 
fast and lodging. With a swift glance the host 
asked his guest for his baggage, and on being in- 
formed that he was not incumbered, the landlord 
told him it was his rule in such cases to ask for 
his pay in advance. This, after much rumagin^- 
in his pockets, and some confusion in his manner, 
was placed in the landlord's hands, after which 
the stranger was shown in the dining room. With 
the new arrival's exit trom the office some dispar- 
aging remarks were indulged in by the lounger's 
at the expense of the personal appearance of the 



l.-? KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

travel-stained stranger. One remarked that his 
shirt bosom had not seen soap suds for a mon^h, 
while another, espied the stranger's bell crowned 
beaver hanging upon the hat rack, said that '^such 
a tile should be made to uniform with the rest 
of his duds," and proceeded to smash in its 
crown with his fists.* 

In the meantime the bossee of the hotel with 
instructions from the proprietor, went out and 
locked the stables securely, saying after having;- 
done so. 

"Yes sir-ee, we have a horse thief with us to 
night, and we'll have to watch things?" 

It is needless to add that the stranger was shad- 
owed until retiring to his room for the nights rest. 
Morning found everything safe about the hotel, 
and the young man under suspicion's ban politely 
announced that he was seeking employment, and 
would be glad to obtain it. The usual spring rush 
of young men from the east had filled up the va- 
cant places, and the only job in sight ofiered was 
a line of post holes to be dug at the edge of town 
and although in the full heat of summer days he 
cheerfully accepted the task, and with coat off and 
bared head he tugged and perspired at his w^ork 
the long days through, and aldiough doubdessly 

*This act was don^ by a burly brute named Du- 
gaii, who through a court techiiecality had just been 
released from custody for the cowardly murder of 
a twelve year old boy at or near Cheyenne, Wyo- 
ming*. A year later he reached ilie end of a vigi- 
lante's rope for the mifrder of an old man near 
Denver. Colorado 



THE TWO STRANGERS. i 

well fao-gecl when the sun hid itself behind {hi- 
low range of hills overlooking this little frontier 
capital, he did not complain of it. The idlers ou 
the veranda of the hotel who were vainly waiting 
Dame Fortune's deferred visit, with broad grins 
on their faces and "cutting" remarks with their 
tongues, as they watclied the weary toiler take 
off his heavy plug and sit it on the ground beside 
himself while at work. 

The writer of these lines was employed at this 
time on a printer's case in the old Dakotain office 
on Territorial book work, and after meals at the 
hotel it was customary before going to my case in 
the office to take a few minutes stroll to the river 
front in recreative exercise. I noted, also at this 
time that the stranger had the same habit and we 
sometimes met there. One morning after break- 
fast an incident of this kind occurred. The 
opening of the day was beautiful, — a heavy fog 
just raising above the sand bars in our front, 
while the big rising sun seemed in crimson blush, 
now and again obscured by the passing of the 
fog veil, To our right under the chalky bluffs, 
Presho's woods — now but a memory — its forest of 
dew bathed leaves glinted and danced in the rays 
of the sun beams. In the high willows facing the 
timber, fifteen or twenty lodges of the red San- 
tees were serenely poising^ and now and again a 
wreath of blue smoke curling high in air, A few 
of the swarthy occupants were, sauntering upon 
the sands or hieing along the narrow foot trail to- 
ward's "Shad-owa-towa" or ''Charley Pecotte's 



110 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

They were both financially stranded, confided their 
troubles to each other, and mutually agreed to 
"raise the wind." ^They footed it over to INIao- 
nolia, twenty miles or more, rented a hall on pro- 
mises, * 'stood off" the printer and billed the town 
for Shakesperian readings and comicalities. After 
two or three nights, — printer's bill paid, they came 
up the grade and landed with three dollars and 
seventy-five cents wrapped up in the company ex- 
chequer. A division of sentiment as to business 
prospects in that town demanded a division of com- 
pany property, and stranger Number One crossed 
the Big Sioux bridge with one dollar and thirty- 
five cents to meet his star of destiny in the land of 
the Dakotas. It was in this manner they had 
told their story. After the departure of the next 
Iowa bound staoe, the face of stranger Number 
Two, was missino pt the International. 

INItiiiy years later — being in a reminiscent mood 
while resting at a ranch — I told this story. Com- 
rade Menct^r, vvho had been listening, thought he 
could help me a little further along with stranger 
Number Two, and begged pardon for tli^ inter- 
ruption. Here is what he said: 

"I was down working in a brick yard, in Sioux 
City, Iovvrt;Iin-.tbe autumn of iSoS. One night in 
early September. I saw, a large crowd gathering 
in frontcifithdvbalcony I )f the, leading hotel. Cp- 
on enquiry, I was told it jVvas an open air political 
meetiji^-. — so elbowed mv wav aloncj the street, 
following up the crowd. I could hear the speaker 
makincr his sallies, and see the clouds of hats eo 



THE TWO STKANGERS. 120 

up, and hear the thunders of applause that greeted 
his eloquent passages of approving word,s. 

Who is that citizen making all that uproar up 
yonder," I asked of an old citizen as^I passed 
along. " ' i 

"Oh, that is Orator Stevenson," replidd old 
citizen. ' 

"Who is Orator Stevenson?" I venttired to ask 
for I was an Eastern tenderfoot then. 

"Oh, I don't know," replied the old citizen 
tersely, ''the Republican State Central Committee 
have engaged . him to even up the State ticket 
majorities with Grant and Colfax and I guess he 
can do it— if any talker c^n." 

And it camip 19 vpaSj3 that the judgement of the 
Central Comnii^ee ^jvas correct. The State ticket 
evened well np\\'rtn tile National. 

About die hofseUliibf 'suspect of the Interna- 
tional — Yankton's qMfck saw bones — or Stranger 
Number One^- the- reader n>ight kjndly enquire — 
what had beconiie of him. We can answer, refer- 
ring to the pkj <^c|3:g^ a,bout sometime deception 
on first appeara-^cp, that it will hold good in this 
case. Stranger Number One had a large com- 
pass to go on, ofit tn our concluding here, his 
later movements Wi# be curtly told. Sometime 
after the events I haveirelated in these opening 
pages, he courted and n,>arned a daughter of the 
leading Dakotiap-^ca,lledji),lhose early days the 
Father of the Territory. He also lik^ Stranger^ 
Number Two, became a party leader and an able, 
eloquent public spoken 'And medical quack — 
well— foi* over twenty years thereafter — or until 
his 'death — he stood Territorial Dakota's formost 
physician. 



CHIBF OP THS STRAHQLSRS. 

THE following entry taken from the diary of 
Joseph Deitrich, woodchopper, dotted down 
November, 1869, while at the stockaded wood- 
yard at Toughtimbcr, will serve as introductory 
to this chronicle; 

'*NoT 19 Friday— Weather splendid all day. Went 
out hunting in the afternoon with Bill. He shot a 
big buck deer." 

The fortunate slayer of the antlered buck above 
mentioned was a verdant appearing fellow called 
by his comrades Big Bill, from his oversize, being 
but a beardless youth of twenty winters. It was 
probably Bill's first trophy in the deer killing line 
and it was the first fresh meat brought into the 
cook room since the camp was organized, the big 
chap from Arkansas was the hero of the evening 
following this event. He exploited the deeds of 
his sire as one of Quantrel's men, and intimated 
that notwithstanding his own youthful appearance 
he too had followed that bold guerilla chief on 
his Kansas raid that ended in the sacking of Law- 
rence. Then he recounted some previous exper- 
ience as a wood chopper, and explained a kind 
of an artistic move with the axe blade, which he 
termed "flopping." Bill's story and the droll 
native Arkansas twang in its recitation, put his 
group of listeners in gladsome mood, and Johnny 
Deitrich suggested that as the Indian method of 
bestowing proper names was the right thing, he 




JOSEPH DIETRICH. 

One of the pioneers of the Missouri 
Slope Country. 



CHIEF OF THE STRANGLERS 122 

suggested that William the slayer of the antlered 
buck be duly annointed and christianed ^'Flopping 
Bill," which motion was acclaimed by all present, 
and thus was the appellation confirmed. 

Toward springtime dissatisfaction ran rampant 
in the wood camp and a general breaking away 
followed among the choppers. Bill with some of 
the others sought employment at Fort Berthold 
Indian agency, but drifted down to the Painted 
Woods after the ice break up and was one of the 
court witnesses in the Reeder murder case putting 
in some time at Yankton during that trial. Then 
taking part in the land rush at the Northern Pa-'^ 
cific crossing of the Missouri he located upon a 
land claim adjoining the prospective city of Bur- 
leigh, and near the site of Fort Lincoln — the mod- 
ern. Discouraged at his prospects financial, the 
big Arkansan sold out his farm for a few dollars 
and worked his way up to Fort Peck, about which 
country the hostile Uncapapas, Santeesand upper 
Yanktoney held sway. The old time traders' diet 
of buftalo hump .and pemmican was in vogue at 
that establishment of the Durfee & Peck company 
and together with the stern nature of company's 
resident agent, made life well nigh unindurable to 
Mr. Cantrell, but he was in a country were grum- 
bling ceased to be a palliative, and the novice to 
toughness must stand up under all that was given 
him — or take to the river for clearance. 

One day in company with Billy Benware, a Sioux 
half breed, Bill was detailed to water a few head 
of cattle belonging to the post, and by some 



123 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

miscalculation, drove one of the bunch in a mire 
hole at the waters edge, and the united assistance 
of the two drivers were required to set the ani- 
mal on its feet. Cantrell carried his gun as was 
the usual habit of all the trader's employees about 
Peck, but through some negligence Benware had 
left his rifle at the fort. In going to the mired 
bovine's assistance, Cantrell had lain his gun down 
on a tuft of grass some twenty yards from the 
mire hole. All this time, as it afterward appeared, 
fiye Sioux warriors had the willows on the two 
herdsmen, and at a given signal jumped out from 
the bush with the idea of cutting off the escape 
of their expected prey. Benware, by nature and 
training ever elert, saw the Indians emerge from 
cover, and without warning or outcry, ran up the 
bank and seized Cantrell'sgun and with the agility 
for which he was noted, made off with it and suc- 
cessfully ran the gauntlet to the fort. The reds 
somjewhat baffled at Ben ware's escape turned 
tkeir attention to Cantrell, who, himself unarmed, 
ran into a bunch of willows and lay down to 
await such disposition as circumstances would 
bring. Before reaching his covert, however, a 
bullet from one of the Indian's guns entered his 
groin, which seemed a mortal wound to him, and 
he even feared his own heart throbs, would betray 
his hiding place to the blood hunters. The Indians 
were not sure that their trapped foe was gunless, 
therefore went about encompassmg his destruction 
in a gingerly way. Their natural fear for an en- 
emy with the *'brush" on them was life for Cantrell, 



CHIKF OF THE STR ANGLERS 124 

for after a few circumlocutions, with ceslutory 
shots Pt the spot where the now badly wounded 
man was supposed to be, they yelled a few choice 
epithets in broken Enorlish, made off in time to 
avoid a conflict with a party of rescuers coming 
from the fort. ' . 

F'or several months after his mishap, Cantrell 
lay in the surgeon's care at, the Fort Buford mil- 
itary hospital His case was a critical one, but 
a robust physique pulled him through. , Some 
months later he again appeared in the Fort Peck 
country and turned ^ip as a woodyard proprietor 
in one of the Missouri's timber points in that sec- 
tion. Matrimonially inclined he had '^spliced up" 
with a fair daughter of the Assinaboine tribe, and 
with a good team of ponies, and ready wood sales 
to passing steamers, the Cantrell establishment 
seemed in a prosperous way. But like all lands 
where the methods of the Bedoun prevail, peace 
and sunshine to the couple were of the short shift 
order. ''Nosey" and a few other disreputable 
characters had been driven away from the Whoop 
(Jp country by the Canadian mounted police took 
refuge on the Missouri in some points below the 
mouth of Musselshell river, but were to- steeped 
in their manner of life to heed the lesson of its 
mishaps — and figure out the risk of continuance. 
After having stolen or swindled through bad rum, 
all the ponies they could from both the northern 
and southern Assinnaboines, they ''let themselves 
loose" on the herds of Granville Stuart — a British 
subject — partly in revenge for their discomfort at 



125 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES, 

and around Whoop Up, and partly for the rev- 
enue that come with tvood horses. A regular hne 
was estabHshed along the Missouri as far south as 
Bismarck and the run made full handed both ways. 
This band was no^ numerous but active. They 
established themselves at some woodyards by 
either buying out, or running out the owner, — if 
they could not trust him. One of the first that 
was tabooed by these gentry was Flopping Bill. 
He was "set-a-foot" early one summer's morning 
and he was compelled to take trip to the fort tor 
the purchase of another team — at the loss of con- 
siderable time and expense. Again he was visited 
by the marauders and again was his wood bank- 
ing team missing. Thinking the horses had only 
strayed, this time, he made a hunt for them but 
on his return was dismayed to find that his South 
Assinnaboine bride did not come to greet him as 
was her usual way. She too, had been stolen or 
coaxed away. Bill had heard of the proverb, that 
"Bad luck like crows never come singly." The 
imprint of strange horse hoofs sign was unmis- 
takable and boot tracks of others had obliterated 
his own. Strong man that he was William Can- 
trell could only seat himself down on his deserted 
door step and cry. And yet — short as the time 
was — while he had sit down a Dr. Jekyll, he 
arose a \Ir. Hyde. 

In the early summer of I885 in one of the con- 
tiguous points near where the waters of the Mus- 
celshell river empties into the Missouri — a lonely 



CHIEF OF THE 8TRANGLERS 12^; 

cabin could be se^n by passing rivermen, and ad- 
mired both for its apparent coziness and the neat- 
nesf> of Its surroundings. It had but one inmate, 
an old man of perhaps sixty years of age. While 
courteous and kind to strangers and wayfarers, 
he was not affable, and was what might be termed 
a recluse — as the world judges. He was a native 
of some southeastern State, probably Kentucky or 
West Virginia, and in ordinary affairs his manner 
betokened the well-bred m.an. In his trim bach- 
elor quarters he kept a few choice books on mis- 
cellaneous subjects in which he was found perusing 
much of his spare time. A few pine knots for the 
passing steamers was his only visable means of 
support, but undoubedly there was a "strong box" 
hid some where about his cabin that had come up 
v/ith him from the southland. But he was guarded 
in his purchases, and it was not until he had made 
many trips to Clendennin's old trading post on 
foot for his grocery supply, did the thought occur 
to him to purchase a pony, which he did one day 
from some presumedly cow boys lounging about 
the post. He had come up from a country where 
no brands were used and the few herogliphics that 
he found upon the flank of his new purchase. 
was all Greek to him as far as he could know. 

One warm summer afternoon, however, as this 
hermit of the Musselshell Vv^as enjoying the cool 
of his shady verandah — with pipe and book, a 
party of cowboys — perhaps fifteen in all, came 
trooping along the river trail, raising a cloud of 
dust that swept across the prairie. To the old 



127 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

man there was nothing remarkable in this save the 
number, which was unusual to him since his resi- 
dence there. It was not until after a halt had 
been made opposite his picketed pony that was 
contentedly feeding on a fresh grass patch several 
yards from the trail. Two of the horsemen rode 
out from the group toward the busy pony with the 
evident idea of inspecting or looking him over. 
Then one of them motioned the others to come 
up when the entire party grouped around the 
picketed animal. After some consultation, four 
men of the group started toward the cabin, w^hile 
the balance of them proceeded to a clump of trees 
facing the cabin from the river bank. The old 
man now became somewhat interested. He had 
laid aside his book and stood in his doorway, lean- 
ing negligently against the casing as the horse- 
men approached him. He had no word of wel- 
come for his visitors nor did they seem to wish for 
any. Two of them dismounted and walked up to 
the old gentleman and each grabbed an arm and 
asked him to take a walk. Strange, indeed, but 
he offered no resistance — not even expostulation. 
As they walked down the recluse's familiar water 
path to the river, they witnessed some of the group 
throwmg a rope over the limb ol a tree, and when 
the trio from the cabin arrived under this canopy 
of green leaves — a giant with the authority of 
a leader, said curtly: 

''Rope him!" 

A moment later the coil of a rope was placed 
about the old man's neck. 



CHIEF OF THE STRANGLEES 128 

Again the leader of the band spoke: *'01d man 
if you have anything to say — why, say it now. We 
have found you holding a horse with the Granville 
Stuart brand. Produce your bill of sale." 

^'Ihave no bill of sale," replied the prisoner. "I 
knov/ nothing about your brands. I bought that 
animal from a party such as you. They got my 
money and left me the pony. That is all." 

'That won't do, old man. Make ready men." 

The rope was adjusted about the prisoner's 
neck in silence and his arms stoutly pinioned. 

''A short shift — old man. Have you anything 
to say." 

Thus spoke the leader as last appeal. 

The sun made blood red by a veil of blue smoke 
was slowly dropping behind the Judith mountains 
to the westward. Sounds of the even flow of fast 
moving waters was wafted from the nearby 
Missouri, and nature could not have seemed 
more beautiful and entrancing to the condemned 
man than in those few moments of silence as his 
eyes followed the declining sun until its last rays 
were hid behind the jao^ged peaks of the sumbre 
mountains. His thoughts were his own. He was 
now an actor in a play. Was it a farce or tragedy? 
Was it jest or earnest. No matter. Life to him 
may have been sweet or it may have been bitter. 
It was for him to know — not for others to care. 
He had never been a suppliant or a begger. He 
would not be now — even Vv^ith lite in forfeit. But 
though silent so long in watching the sinking sun, 
he had not forgotten to answer his captor's ques- 



129 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

tion, and with a look of firmness as he gazed in 
the face of die scrowling crowd, he said blundy: 

"I have nodiing to say!" 

''String him up," came as a command from the 
leader of the stranglers, and with a dozen cowboys 
pulling the rope taut on the choking man until he 
hung by the neck limp and still, and thus perished 
the first of thirty-two people put to death by Flop- 
ping Bill and his paid hirelings sent out by two 
or three rich stock owners to avenge themselves 
of the losses sustained from the depredadons of 
the Nosey gang of professional stock thieves. 

*'If that old fellow is a horse thief he's a queer 
one," said one of the stranglers as they rode from 
the man whom no mercy had been shown, and the 
recluse who had probably fled his home from dis- 
appointment or family trouble would not try to 
save his own life even though its price was at the 
expense of an undeserved stigma. 

Some days after the scene above described, the 
steamer Helena put into shore at one of the yards 
at Long Point, to wood-up for the Fort Benton 
run. The prow of the boat had hardly touched 
the bank, and the gang plank still in the hands of 
the placing crew, when a wild looking young wo- 
man with a babe in her arms, came boimding out 
from a clump of bushes and leaped upon the pro- 
jecting plank before the astonished rousters could 
unbraid her for her daring and dangerous feat. 
But she seemed speechless and terror sticken for 
several minutes and could only point toward the 



CBIEF OF THE STRANGLERS 130 

cabin beyond the wood pile before she collapsed 
Into hysterics on the steamer's deck. 

The crew soon disc6vered the cause. In the 
rear of the cabin stretched the body of a man from 
the limb of a tree. He was hanging by the neck 
from a rope's end, and although quite dead his 
body was warm, and from the woman's story, he 
was strangled but a short time before the arrival 
of the steamer. He was taken from his work by 
a band of horseman, whose leader — a giant — was 
deaf to all entreaty, and unmindful of the real sit- 
uation to which the facts upon investigation would 
warrant. 

About these times, also, the cordon of the 
stranglers drew about Nosey and his half-dozen 
ruffians, who were the primary cause of all these 
disturbances along the Upper Missouri. For the 
most part the members of this gang of thieves had 
made headquarters at an old hunting camp at Long 
Point, but shifted about to other isolated cabins 
and camps between Fort Peck and the mouth of 
Arrow creek. Honest woodyardmen, or the lowly 
wolfer and trapper were bound to be comprom- 
ised in some manner with this gang if they would 
live in that region. At best they must remain 
passive to their lawlessness, otherwise would meet 
the same list of mishaps that had befallen Flop- 
ping Bill In his woodyard experience which we 
have chronicled. They had no fear of the law 
abiding, but they did fear the lawless. The law 
could not protect them in their isolation but the 



131 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

robbers could harm and harrass them as they had 
Cantrell and others who were not to their Hking. 
While these bands of hangmen sent out by the 
Montana stock association may have committed 
grevious error in the murder of some innocent 
people, the killing of Nosey and several ot his 
band near the prairies' edge at Long Pomt did 
much toward compensation for their misdirected 
zeal in the outset. Notwithstanding the boastful 
swagger and gall of these outlaws, the old adage 
held good that there is *'no fight in a horse thief" 
and that his reputation like that of the cottontail 
rabbit rests on the use of his legs. While a few 
rifle shots were fired by them as a semblance of 
defense, yet with the exception of two or three 
who escaped down the Missouri in a skiff, the 
Nosey gang was exterminated without the loss of 
a man, or a scratch even, to a member of the 
Flopping Bill party. That the lesson of this raid 
of death was a needed one, few conversant v.'ith 
the situaHon can gainsay, but the work of irre- 
sponsible mobs or gatherings of men drawn to- 
gether by impulse or excitement too often commit 
a greater error than that which they would rem- 
edy.* 

*One evening in the latter part of March 1883, 
two travelers called at the writer's hermitage at the 
Painted Woods and askedfor permission for a camp 
and recupeiition for themselves and ponies. One 
of these was a young man named O'Neal, known 
in early day Bismarck as an emploj^ee about Scott's 
pioneer livery »table, and for all the scribe had 
known to the contrary, had borne a fair reputation. 
The day following came on a blizzard, and O'Neal 




William Cantrell. [Flopping Bill 



CHIEF OF THE STRANGLERS 132 

said he was glad, to make a lay-over as that gave 
him the opportunity he had purposely sought. He 
had known of me as a professional trapper and 
wolfer, and that I was well acquainted in the upper 
White Earth country. With limited experience 
in the calling, and with but a steamboat rouster's 
circumscribed views as to the region, they would 
be thankful for such information as I would give. 
Such knowledge was given unstinted, and without 
the selfish fear of rivalry that might govern one in 
the calling — for attraction to that manner of life 
had passed me by. 

I had heard of the arrival of these amateur wolf- 
ers in the Yv'hite Earth region, and of the meagre 
revenue that usually attend the efforts of the nov- 
ice. Had learned that the Jim Smith gang of out- 
laws and horse thieves were making headquarters 
about Grintiell's place, and knew they had no time 
for a camper about there who was liable to see too 
much, and Grinnell, himself who kept an open bar, 
could note more profit from the pockets of success- 
ful horse thieves, than the usually hard-up wolfer, 
found an easy conscience in helping "freeze them 
out." O'Neal was particularly obnoxious to them, 
so after being barrassedin various ways for some 
months, he finally concluded to get out of harm's 
way and return down the trail to Bismarck. 

Mow behold the irony of fate ! 

The Jim Smith gang had been down operating 
among the new settlers of McLean county and had 
stolen many of their work horses at a critical time, 
and naturally the farmers were in a ferment. 
Knowing this, soon after O'Neal's departure, some 
of the Smith gang by way of a practical joke, wrote 
a note to some Fort Berth old and Hancock parties 
that there was a horse thief coming down the river 
trail, and to look out for him. At Berthold, O'Neal 
was joined by a home-sick youth who had unloaded 
himself from an up-bound steamer. The two, tired 
out with the day's journey vv^ent into camp along the 
highway. Their arrival v/as made known, and long 
before the midnight hour, were awakened from 
sweet slumber by a dozen or more excited men who 
bound and hurried them over to the stage road 
and telegraph line and halted at a coulee near the 



133 



KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 



old Reifsnider place and within two miles of \¥eller 
station. The boy had plead his case so clear that he 
was released, but O'Neal was not so fortunate. He 
did not deny coming down from GrinneiPs, from 
whence that mysterious message had come But he 
knew, he said, that he neither stole horses or dealt 
in stolen horses, and if given any time at all — could 
prove it. But again came up that mysterious word 
from Grinneirs, and the cry went up "hang him, 
hang him"'' and all pleading for life was ended. 
The dawn of day that followed revealed a tragedv — 
as the preceeding darkness had covered a grievous 
wrong — and that it must stand as such for ever and 
ever. 




00 



U 

c 

03 



m) 






WHERE THE SPOTTED OTTER PLAY- 

ONE of the most noticeable landmarks along the 
Upper Missouri river are the Square Buttes, a 
group of high, square topped hills located on the 
west bank, and about fiifteen miles above the con- 
fluence of Heart river with the main stream. These 
buttes are on a level with the highest ridges of 
the prairie thereabout, but a strata of stone near 
the surface had been protection to any change in 
formation in the thousands of years that they have 
stood as a kind of gateway in the passage of 
this mighty artery in its surge and flow to the sea. 
To a passenger in a boat following the river in 
its winding, or to a land traveler moving on either 
side of these hills, the peculiar grouping is such, 
that they have all the peculiarity of the moving 
picture in its numerous and novel transformations 
that present themselves to the observer in the 
various changes of his position. 

On the west and south side of these hills a 
small creek twists and curves — now among jutted 
bluffs and cut banks — now on meadow and plain. 
The stream is fed by numerous springs gushing 
down from the timber lined seams among the 
buttes — icy cold in summer but in winter days the 
temperature of the springs were such that ice could 
not form, and snow melted as it fell. Here it was 
that the frog found its natural haven, came and 
multiplied, as well as the feeders upon its flesh. 



135 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

All animated kind dirive best where conditions 
to their thrift is best. Thus it was the little creek 
whose waters laved the Square Buttes had in the 
long ago been known to the primitive red hunter 
as the place "where the spotted otter play." Ex- 
cepting only the eagle, the horse, the dog or the 
buffalo, the otter was an animal that entered more 
largely into the life of the wild Indian than any 
other not above named. It was not its flesh for 
food — for that was too rancid even for the stomach 
of a meat eater — nor yet the otter's glossy fur; 
neither was it for its service as a robe or covering 
that laid claim to the Indian's adoration, but the 
virtue its fur-lined skin possessed as "medicine" in 
his prayer for good fortune, and as a weapon to 
ward off the machinations of the evil one. 

As with the white buffalo to the Indian, a freak, 
in animal color always played deeply upon his 
superstition, and as an ordinary otter skin was re- 
garded as supernal in its power, what must have 
been his veneration for the strangly gifted otter, 
robed in its parti-colored fur suit of black and 
white? 

On the writer's advent as a fur trapper on the 
Upper Missouri — with previous experience among 
the Pawnees of Loup river as a starter — otter 
trapping became a specialty and contmued as such 
during the time spent following that avocation. 
About that time Jefferson Smith the veteran tra- 
der amonor the Gros Ventres who had put many 



WHERE THE SPOTTED OTTER PLAY 136 

lette and Captain Bonneville, with a later career 
on the Yellowstone as a free trapper, which made 
the advice and information g^iven by this patriarch 
on trapping valuable when in good faith. On in- 
quiry as to grounds the veteran trapper advised a 
trip to the Square Buttes and tind the place where 
''the spotted otter play" and make fortune and a 
reputation there as he had done once upon a time. 
Indians — especially Aricarees. were also advising 
as to the necessity of a trip there from which some 
thing unusual must come. 

With this purpose in view, and after many feints 
— with pony in pack I passed over the Square 
Buttes from the north side on a March day 1875, 
but on account of the depth of snow^ retrograded 
to Otter creek and went into camp. The Mis- 
souri was in an ugly break up, the timber points 
were all flooded, and as if to put things in climax 
to a lone camper, a blizzard suddenly arose at 
mid day and the tent with pots and kettles went 
swirling through the snow-laden air like a dirrigi- 
ble balloon, but had presence of mind enough to 
grab a few blankets and a few pounds of corn 
meal tied up in a sack, in which were also a tin 
cup and a few draws of tea. Thus laden, I went 
swirling down under the northern base of the 
largest butte and was stranded in a mountain of 
snow, but by a miracle of good fortune found a 
leaning dead tree, and another twirl of fortune — 
for failure meant death by freezing — after repeated 
attempts with moist matches and almost the last 
one gone, I succeeded in starting a fire against 



137 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

the tree. Following this the body of the tree 
took fire, and for six nights and as many days I lay 
in the warm ash bed following the receding flame 
until the outward branches alone remained. This 
blizzard raged between the ist and 7th of April, 
1875, and for duration and violence I have always 
believed that it eclipsed anything in the blizzard line 
during near forty years residence in the Dakotas, 
although this might be qualified as viewing it 
from an outside experience. 

Once more the warm sun came forth and once 
more the snow disappeared and once again the 
writer took up his line of march for the place 
"where the spotted otter play." Six hours there- 
after I stood facing the Square Buttes creek in a 
great flood from melting snow. Lar^e ice cakes 
and drift wood were hurrying down to deposit 
their mite in the great moving mass on the Mis- 
souri, some six miles away. To some it would 
have been a desolate scene-- but to my eyes it 
was a grand panorama, none the less beautiful, 
because of the sense of loneliness in which it was 
environed. A few timid deer were feeding in a 
coulee hard by, and a flock of wild geese coming 
up from the southland, after descrying a circle, 
alighted a few hundred yards away. The pony 
under his pack, walked about, nibbling at bunches 
of grass here and there, while I was surveying 
the Missouri bottom for a wreathe of smoke for I 
had half suspected that Vic Smith the hunter was 
somewhere about, having made covert boast that 



WHERE THE SPOTTED OTTER PLAT. 138 

he ''would be on spotted otter's play ground be- 
fore the trapper from Painted Woods could get a 
move on" — thereby forcing an alternative of camp 
partnership or division of the trapping grounds. 

The surmise took shape as a curl of smoke was 
noted issuing from a willow patch about two miles 
down stream, and about the same time an alarm 
from the geese turned my attention in their direc- 
tion, and noticed beyond them and on the opposite 
side of the swollen stream, a man gesticulating 
with his arms in a somewhat excited manner. 
Thinking it was Smith or some other hunter en- 
deavoring to attract my attention to the geese, 
did not heed him further until he arrived directly 
opposite my position, when he yelled: 

"Who are you?" 

"A trapper from the Painted Woods," I quietly 
answered. 

"Are you — " 

"The same" I again retorted. 

"Oh, I guess I am all right then," he said in a 
lower voice as if meant for himself^ then again 
yelling across: 

"Throw me over some grub, I am very hungry," 
and sat down on the bank to await my compliance. 

Taking some crackers and a small hunk of ba- 
con from the commissary side of the pack, I used 
David's sling method in transporting it across the 
stream, and even that fell short, and the stranger 
was obliged to wade waist deep to rescue the 
lunch from a covering of mud and ice. He then 
asked that I kindle a fire, which was done, and 



139 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

after a hasty feed, he found a large dry stick with 
which he phinged into the stream in defiance to 
danger from floating ice, and in a short time there- 
after, was dripping over a roaring blaze that had 
been prepared for his coming. 

He said he had no secrets to keep, and was 
wholly at my mercy. That he was the wagon boss 
whom General Custer had arrested in connection 
with the loss ot some forage in the quartermas- 
ter's department at Fort Abraham Lincoln, and 
which he claimed he was unjustly accused, even 
though the circumstances of the case were some- 
what against him. He was held for the action of 
every man in his train — be that man's reputation 
good or bad. He had been a prisoner for some 
time in the military guard house in company with 
a young Sioux Indian named Rain-in-the-Face, 
whom Captain Tom Custer with a squadron of 
cavalry had arrested and brought up from Grand 
River agency several months before for the killing 
of the sutler and doctor in the military expedition 
to the Yellowstone, 1873. 

The two prisoners broke jail at midnight, each 
taking his own way under a heavy fire from the 
guards. The wagon boss did not know the fate 
of his Indian companion, but for himself he was 
followed to the Heart river by the reserve guards 
at which stream, thoug^h at the height of its spring 
break-up, he jumped astride of a moving cake of 
ice, which, however, gave him the slip when he 
was precipitated in mid stream, and about the same 
time came a last volley from the guards, who in 



WHERE THE SPOTTED OTTER PLAT 140 

peering through the darkness after this last mis- 
hap must have concluded that he was done for, as 
they made no attempt to follow him further. 

But old Father Time did not reach out his long 
scythe for the wagon boss, and he floated to the 
opposite shore, his clothes thoroughly soaked and 
dripping, with no chance for a change or a match 
to light a fire. Luckly for him the night was not 
a freezing one; the heat from his body gradually 
warmed his clothes, and in this situation he had 
made his way to Square Buttes creek. 

After some time spent before the fire I told the 
wagon boss that hunter Smith's camp was in 
sight, judging from a smoke, and that we had bet- 
ter look it up. The surmise proved correct, and 
when we reached the willows found Smith and 
three or four companions encamped there. 

The wagon boss was known to Smith and his 
predicament guessed at. The hunted man was 
given a good night's rest but was advised for his 
own safety to get out of the country as soon as 
possible. The next afternoon I made a sign-up 
for otter along the creek, and at farthest point out 
discovered two horsemen whose motions were 
those of Indians, and on my return to camp noti- 
fied the pprty what 1 had seen, and the concensus 
of opinion in camp was, that either hostile Indians 
or Custer's scouts were locating us, and Smith 
again urged the wagon boss to move on, but with- 
out success, his late experience evidently being too 
much for him — in other words, — had lost his grit. 

But the climax would come. At early dawn 



141 KALSTDOSCOPIO LIVES 

the foUowing morning, being the first to awaken, 
I arose to replenish the hre, when the shadows of 
a hundred horsemen stood in motionless siihoute 
against the steep bluff in our front. Every man 
in camp was on his feet at the first alarm, and 
die wagon boss drawled out pitifully: 

"I am gone — here is Tom Custer and all his 
cavalry commana!" 

An optical survey brought confirmation. Cap- 
tain Custer and Interpreter Girard stood in front 
of a hundred cavalrymen with carbines at rest. 

"Is that the man" said Custer, pointing toward 
the wagon boss. 

"That is the man," replied Girard. 

It was impossible to keep my eyes or thoughts 
at rest or heart at ease during the fevv^ minutes 
that followed, as the wagon boss was lashed upon 
a horse and the bugle sounded, and the order of 
trot march given to the command by its chief. 
Elation seemed written on every countenance 
among the blue coated soldiers for the work they 
had successfully done. It was they who had 
captured the Indian Rain-in-the-Face to begin 
with, and now they had die man who had undone 
the lesson of chastisement in returning him as a 
flame of fire among his people and a further 
menace to the peace of the border. 

It was the look of hopelessness, dispair and 
shame which saddened the prisoner's face, that 
enlisted my sympathy as they moved away from 
the foothills of the Square Buttes. Within two 




Bone Monument at Custer's Last Stand, 
Battle of Little Big Horn. 



WHERE THE SPOTTED OTTER PLAT 142 

months he had discredited an honorable calling, 
brought reproach and a cloud on the lives of his 
young wife and her two babes, and all of these 
things I felt, as though reading his mind, were 
casting him in the abyss of despair, as he turned 
to look backward and across the big river to the 
neighboring town within whose precincts huddled 
in their mortification the very essence of his life. 
His was a verified dread. Within two months 
from that hour he was serving a two years term 
in the penitentiary; within six months his wife 
had secured a divorce and had married another. 

Now take a whirl with the kaleidoscope and 
and behold the transformation in this life picture! 

Within eighteen months from the morning that 
the captive wagon boss was borne from the spot- 
ted otter's play ground, Captain Tom Custer and 
all his command — men and horses — were dead; 
their unburied bones contributing to the first mon- 
ument at Little Big Horn in commemoration of 
that field of death. 

Of the despised prisoners at the Fort Lincoln 
guard house, the Indian arose a hero among his 
people, and it is said in his savage /renzy he had 
torn the bleeding heart from Captain Custer's 
lifeless form when the day of Little Big Horn's 
carnage was over. And the wagon boss. Twenty 
years later a letter was received from him by an 
old friend dated at an Arizona mining camp in 
which he made some inquiry about his family. ''Tell 
my children," he wrote, *'I have been prosperous 
here and have money and property for us all." 



BLOODY KHIFE AHD GALL 

TWO of the most picturesque and interesting^ 
Indian characters along the Upper Missouri 
valley during the military occupation, was Bloody 
Knife a half blood Sioux and Aricarree and the 
Uncapapa Sioux chief Gall. The lives of both 
were of the spectacular order from their first en- 
try to a warrior's estate until their death — and 
during all the years of activity each regarded the 
other as his most inveterate and unforgiving foe. 
Gall stood in his moccasins near six feet tall, a 
frame of bone, with the full breast of a gladiator 
and bearing of one born to command. No sena- 
tor of old Rome ever draped his toga with a more 
becoming grace to the dignity of his position in 
the Forum, than did Gall in his chiefs robe at an 
Indian council. General Custer's widow who had 
followed her husband in most of his Indian cam- 
paigns, and had seen many different tribal repre- 
sentatives of the red man at his best, declares in her 
book, "Boots and Saddles" that Gall was the finest 
specimen of the physical Indian that she had ever 
met with. Bloody Knife, too had a dramatic pose 
and was more of a real actor than Gall but lacked 
the natural and dignified bearing of the Sioux 
chieftain. Gall easily held his position as chief, 
and from his own little band of six lodges in 
1866, his following numbered sixty lodges in iSjS 




Chief Gall, 



jLbadeb of the Nobthekn Sioux at the 
Battle on the Little Big Hobn^ 



i^LOODY KNIFE AND GALL. 144 

not to iTK^ntion his prominence as war chief and 
commander of the northern Sioux division at the 
battle on the Little i>i^MIorn, and shared the 
chief command with the redoububle Crazy Horse. 
the red Stonewall Jackson of the confederated 
Sioux. 

Bloody Knife was no chief, neither did he have 
the ^ift of command. He was an excellent guide, 
a brave warrior and a true blue scout. No officer 
of the army with whom he served, ever charged 
him with disloyalty whatever the provocation, nor 
in shirking any duty however hazardous. It was 
this reputation that brought him to General Cus- 
ter on that dashing officer's first advent in the 
Dakotas, and n^mained with him to the end. The 
General admired the noted red scout for his good 
qualities, but put the curb on his bad ones. fJne 
of his weaknesses, was an inborn cruelty, and 
Custer reciied an instance of this in his expedition 
to the Black Kills, 1874. In making a detour to 
behold a cave with promised wonders, they found 
a lonely old Sioux, and took him prisoner. Bloody 
Knife demanded his right to kill and scalp his old 
enemy — as he calked him — in his own way. The 
General demurred, and the scout in angry mood 
took the sulks and refused to l^e comforted. He 
dropped to the rear and rode alone the balance of 
the day, in dramatic humility and disgust. 

An anecdote which antedates the Black Hills 
incident many years, reveals Bloody Knife with 
his passions uncontrolled and at full [>lay. This 
was August 10^ 1869, near Fort Buford, after the 



145 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

killing of four men on their way to the hayfield 
by a mixed band ofhostiles, but principally Unca- 
papa Sioux. In this unequal combat to the death, 
a ventursome Sioux boy was shot in the thigh but 
for some reason had been left on the north bank 
of the Missouri by his comrades, as they retired 
across the old buffalo ford nearly opposite the 
place of encounter. The nearness of the fort and 
fear of pursuit had made their retirement a hurried 
one, and the boy left behind to shift for himself 
While watching his comrades pass over and away 
from the opposite side, he turned in dismay only 
to be confronted with sudden fear. The willows 
parted — vengeance seeking Bloody Knife was 
upon him — his right hand firmly gripping the 
dreaded scalping knife. The boy seemed to have 
known him, and as the knife blade went circling 
around his scalp lock he said despairingly, as in- 
terpreted from his native Sioux. 

"Bloody Knife have pity. I am only a boy as 
you may see — and this was my first trip to war." 

"Bloody Knife will take care that you will not 
make a mistake again," replied the merciless scout 
as he tore off the scalp and reached down and 
clasped the boy's hand, and with his keen knife 
blade circled the victim's wrist, at the same time 
breaking down the bone joints. 

"You will kill me, Bloody Knife" again plead 
the boy. 

"Bloody Knife prepares his enemy for the hap- 
py hunting ground before starting him on his long 
journey," said the scout, with unfeeling sarcasm, 



BLOODY KNIFE AND GALL. 146 

as he reached for the boy's other hand and treated 
it in the same manner. By this time, from pain and 
loss of blood, the Sioux boy was indifferent to, 
further mutilation. 

In the early spring of 1868^ Yellowstone Kelly, 
then carrying the military mail between Forts 
Stevenson and Buford, claimed that he was at- 
tacked by two Sioux near the mouth of upper or 
Little Knife river and had killed them both. While 
the Indians had the advantage of numbers and 
position, the mail carrier overeached them in the 
matter of "shooting irons," he having a sixteen 
shot Henry rifle while his adversaries had but one 
muzzle loading fluke and a couple of bows and 
arrows. After his victory the mail carrier put 
back to Fort Berthold and reported his adventure, 
whereupon the irrepressible Bloody Knife imme- 
diately sallied out and took up the trail to the 
place indicated by the mail carrier, found the two 
dead Sioux as represented; tore off their frozen 
scalps, and gathered up other trophies of the affray 
and returned down to the village where the allied 
warriors joined in high carnival and a scalp dance, 
in which the honors were evenly divided between 
the man that did the slaughtering and the man 
who ''counted his coo." 

Late in the spring of 1868. in connection with 
an Aricaree known among the traders as Red Legs, 
Bloody Knife was accused of the murder of an old 
trapper named LaFranc, for his peltries. The 
trapper was found by a party of Gros Ventres on 



147 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

a creek near the mouth of Little Missouri. Me 
was lying dead, face downward, with a bullet hole 
throug^h the back of his head. An unsprung trap 
was lying by his side, and was evidently a clear 
case of a trapper trapped. 

One afternoon in the summer of 1873, while 
at the door of the stockade at Point Preparation, 
Bloody Knife, heading a small party of Aricarees, 
came dashing up to the gates, the ponies they 
were riding all covered with lather and perspira- 
tion dripping from their bodies: 

"You man that talk Paw^nee" said the excited 
and ruffled leader in the Aricaree tongue, ''my 
heart is strong. I have fought a steamboat this 
day." 

"I hope you had better luck than the Spaniard 
Don Quixote when he fought the windmill," I 
ventured in reply. 

"Don't talk back — my heart is very bad," said 
Bloody Knife ag^ain at the same time cocking his 
gun, but in an instant later he was surrounded and 
calmed down by his more pacific comrades. The 
Indians then gave an explanation of their conduct. 
They had just been discharged from a six months 
enlistment in the military scouting service at Fort 
Lincoln, and to celebrate the event Bloody Knife 
had, somehow or o.:i:-v, procured a jug of whiskey 
with which he freely imbibed before leaving the 
fort. In crossing the Missouri river ferry he got 
in an alteration with the boat crew in which they 
were joined by an orderly sargeant who attempted 




^■--T-^JrrlM^ 




OLD FORT CLARK, 
As Drawn by Catlln in 1832. 



BLOODY KNIFE AND GALL. 148 

to shoot Bloody Knife as principal disturber, but 
failed to put him out of action. Upon reaching 
shore . with their ponies they mounted at once 
and headed homeward, but Bloody Knife's 
dander was up and he refused to follow. As his 
comrades scampered away he turned back and 
fired several shots into the steamer's hull in wild 
bravado, and in return compliment from the boat, 
a number of bullets whistled close about the red 
warrior's ears, and the whole affair being merely 
confirmatory of the oft quoted saying "that for 
every man killed in battle his weight in lead is 
expended." 

Late in the autumn of 1875, ^^e writer dropped 
into the Aricaree quarter of the Indian village at 
Fort Berthold from the White Earth country 
where I had spent some months on a hunting and 
trapping expedition. Among others to greet my 
arrival was Bloody Knife, w^ho said instanter, that 
he had a proposition to make. That I had a hunt- 
mg rig complete — was on a vacation — and could 
listen. He wanted .to form a hunting partnership, 
at once. A hunting party of Aricarees had just re- 
turned from a trip to old Fort Clark loaded down 
with deer and elk meat, and reported a band of 
forty elk in the bottom lands south of Lake Man- 
dan, and not yet disturbed. 

Such a proposition was readily accepted; not 
that the writer was anxious to turn into an elk 
slayer, but that the route selected was but the 
continuation of his journey to the Painted Woods 



149 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

country where he had expected to go into winter 
quarters. There was also another reason — more 
of moment — and of an opportunity long sought. 
Bloody Knife was a plain spoken linguist in both 
Sioux and Aricaree; in fact for clearly defined 
expression of tongue, and of conveying ideas 
which could be readily understood by an amateur 
linguist. I never met his superior among any In- 
dians of whatsoever tribe or nation during my 
many years experience with these people. And 
in the sign language he was simply perfect. For 
some information often sought and as often baffled 
in the seeking — the opportunity was now within 
reach. Whatever his faults Bloody Knife was no 
liar and if he talked at all — would talk straight. — 
For this I would go in partnership with Bloody 
Knife. He had sought the trapper's companionship 
for his thorough equipment for winter service, so 
after all, although with reasons diverse, converg- 
ing of interests started us down the frozen bed of 
the Missouri as two of a company. 

The second night out we found camp at the Red 
Springs timber point, when after supper, and when 
my companion had his smoke over, I said to him: 
"For a number of years the white traders at Fort 
Berthold have been telling of the troubles between 
yourself and the Sioux chief Gall. Will you tell 
me the origin of ihat trouble?" 

"Bloody Knife has a hated foe in Gall and does 
not want to speak about him. Better talk of the 
elk we are to kill at Lake Mandan," said my red 
comrade with an uncanny frown. 



BLOODS KNIFE AND GALL. 150 

After some minutes of studied silence save the 
sound from puffing at his pipe Bloody Knife again 
spoke out: 

'Who among the traders was telling you of 
these things? 

"Girard, old Jeff Smith, Malnori and old man 
Buchaump," I made answer. 

"And Packineau," quickly chimed in the s*noker 
with some show of attention. 

''And Packineau," I reiterated. 

"Well, go on now and tell what they say. I can 
listen," said my companion in a more communi- 
cative mood. 

"They say that Bloody Knife's mother is an 
Aricaree while his father was an Uncpapa Sioux. 
That he was born and brought up in a Sioux camp 
but early learned to hate his boy companions be- 
cause of affronts and by being almost continually 
taunted about his mother being of Aricaree blood." 

'^That may all be true," interrupted my compan- 
panion, 'It was a long time ago." 

"Then," I continued, "The mother finding life 
unindurable for her boy as well as for herself, 
forsook husband and his people and made her 
way 1 nek to her girlhood home." 

"Meantime Bloody Knife grew up to be about 
twenty years old, when one day he had a longing 
to visit the camp of his father then at the mouth 
of Rosebud river. He must make the trip alone 
and if caught out from camp on the prairies could 
expect no mercy from a tribal enemy. He had 
reached the Sioux camp — and in good faith could 



151 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

claim protection and fellowship. This would have 
been accorded him but for a boyhood enemy who 
was at the time a member of the soldier band and 
of growing influence over the braves of the camp. 
That by an order from the head soldier and the 
active assistance of young Gall and others of his 
kind — Bloody Knife was stripped and beaten with 
ramrods and coo sticks until blood coursed in 
streams down his back, and was then told to be- 
gone — otherwise speedy death would overtake 
the loiterer. 

"How! how!" answered the exhausted smoker, 
putting away his pipe. 

''That in the autumn of 1862, two younger 
brothers of Bloody Knife were caught out on a 
hunting trip by a war party of Sioux and both 
killed, scalped, quartered and left to rot upon the 
open plain. Gall was the reputed leader of this 
war party." 

"How! how!" again ejaculated my red comrade. 

"In the early winter of 1865," I resumed "the 
Gall, then chief of but four lodges of Uncpapa 
Sioux, came into Fort Berthold and encamped in 
the willows south of the fort. Their mission was 
a peaceable one — if appearances was an indica- 
tion. A company of soldiers with its quota of 
officers were encamped near the fur company fort. 
The commander's general instructions were to 
defend and not persecute. To maintain peace with 
all the tribes if possible. This was the desire of 
the government. The Uncpapa Sioux were then 
making friendly overtures to the Mandans, Gros 



BLOODS KNIFE AND GALL. 152 

Ventres and Aricarees, and desired an alliance. 
As these confederated bands had all the trouble 
thejr could stand under with the lower Yanktoney, 
Blackfoot and allied tribes, they were glad of any 
diversion in their own favor." 

*This was the situation when Chief Gall's family 
of women scraped away the debris at the edge of 
the red willow bar to make clean a place to put 
their lodge. But around them hove a spirit of evil." 

''Bloody Knife — restless being thathe is — came 
upon the stage of action. He had been watching 
every move in his surroundings from a corn scaf- 
fold — and was ready. He started for the officers 
quarters at once and thus addressed the ranking 
officer:" 

"Do you want the bad Sioux who has been kill- 
ing these white men found dead and scalped in 
lonely places along this river." 

" *I do,' " replied the officer, no doubt having 
in mind the notorious outlaw chief, Long Dog and 
his renegade band of mixed bloods." 

•* 'If you do want him — and want him bad" 
said the foxy scout, *' bring along your soldiers 
— you will want all of them. The scoundrel is 
now fl'nvn in yon willows," at the same time rais- 
ing Ins unblanketed arm in the direction of the 
lower corn gardens south west of the village." 

''Did Packineau tell you that?" again interrupted 
my now thoroughly interested companion. 

"Yes; and Girard, and Malnori, and Buchaump 
and old Jeff Smith," I answered. 

'•Go on," said my hunting partner gruffly. 



153 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

The officer commanding immediately directed 
the call to arms and a lieutenant with a platoon of 
of soldiers with instructions to follow Bloody Knife 
as guide, find the Indian pointed out and kill 
him or any others that may resist or make trouble. 
The guide led the officer and his soldiers to the 
Sioux camp; a surround was made of the Gall's 
lodge and as the surprised chief emerged from the 
door flap, he was shot, knocked down and pinned 
to the earth by one of the soldiers ramming his 
bayonet through the Gall's stout breast. Blood 
streamed up from the gaping bayonet wound, his 
mouth and nostrels. The officer walking up to 
and bending over the motionless form pronounced 
him ''done for." 

''Not yet — but I'll make him dead," said Bloody 
Knife, who also came quickly to survey the pros- 
trate form of his fallen enemy, and suiting action 
to his word, rammed his buckshot loaded gun near 
the Gall's blood smeared face, and discharp^ed 
both barrells with a loud report." 

But the officer with a hand more deft and a mind 
more active than the vengeful scout, had tipped 
the barrells aslant and the discharged gun tore a 
hole in the ground a few inches to the left of the 
Sioux chiefs head." 

"Bloody Knife went off in high dudgeon at the 
officer's interferance and endeavored to create a 
wrathful commotion in the Aricaree quarter but 
was checkmated by wiser heads." 

"Had that white chief let Bloody Knife alone," 
said my partner in interruption, "his brother officer 



BLOODY KNIFE AND GALL. 154 

would not have been dragged by the neck to his 
death back of the Sentinel Buttes and the eyes of 
the black man put out by heated iron ramrods 
as was done in Gall's camp on the headwaters of 
Heart river. But go on with your talk. What 
next?" 

'The next is information I would like to know 
from Bloody Knife himself" I replied, **not even 
Packineau could or would tell me of this. How 
did Gall arise as one from the dead after all of 
those bayonets had been thrust through his breast 
— after all that loss of blood — for they say he 
bled near a gallon on the spot where he fell?' 

**That was no secret with me then or is it a 
mystery now," said Bloody Knife thoughfully in 
Sioux — for it was it was in that language we were 
conversing. **In Gall's camp was an old medicine 
woman known for her great success in the curing 
and healing of gun shot wounds. Into her hands 
the body of Gall was placed by his favorite wife, 
and resusitation began on a fast moving travioux. 
It was near this point — secluded in the willows — 
that the medicine woman put him safely with the 
living. Now let us go to sleep and dream of 
blood, — that good fortune may attend us among 
the elk herds of Lake Mandan." 

The next morning we sledded down to a point 
of young cottonwoods where we found our old 
friend DeWitt Clinton and his two Indian women 
nicely domiciled in a log shack, and getting out 
wood for the next season's run of boats. Here 
we loitered for a day, and my comrade, was pro- 



155 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

fuse In his meat promises to the mesdames when 
he returned from the hunting ground of Lake 
Mandan. 

After our departure and while under way I said: 
"Bloody Knife you made good hunting promises 
to the Rabbit," referring to his conversation witli 
one of the Indian women. 

''I had to," retorted my comrade, "to have her 
make eood luck for us. I want to return from 
Lake Mandan loaded down with meat. That old 
woman is medicine." 

"In that case she may have read your thoughts 
and thwart your plans. She may be more than 
medicine — a witch." I said. 

"That may be," replied Bloody Knife softly, but 
accompanied his words by a nervous and uneasy 
look. 

That same evening we reached the head of Elm 
Point, and expected to go into quarters in the 
abandoned McCall shacks for the niorht but were 
surprised to fmd Carahoof and Dan Knapp — two 
Bismarck hunters — in full possession of the prem- 
ises. We were heartily welcomed, however, — 
and piled our donnage in one of the abandoned 
rooms and picketed the ponies on a grass knoll. 

At this point a high ridge faces Knife river 
with a most picturesque view of the surrounding 
country for many miles on either side of the Mis- 
souri. From the highest point of the ridge here, 
the place had long been noted as the rendezvous 
of the Indian eagle trapper — and with them it was 
held as hallowed ground. Every coulee or bluff, 



o 

^ 







BLOODY KNIFE AND GALL. 15G 

hereabout, had a legend or modern data to tell of 
some romantic escapade or tragedy. On the west 
bank of the Missouri, opposite, the Gros Ventres 
had lived in their dirt lodges, killed buffalo and 
planted and tended their corn in the early days of 
the past century and when the dreaded war whoop 
would echo from the bluffs and varable scenes be 
re-enacted, in the violent death or deaths to the 
unwary or overconfident. Less than a mile above 
this point of bluffs that loomed up back of our 
quarters of the night, a British fort was built and 
a British flag floated in the breeze many years be- 
fore the American explorers Lewis and Clark had 
floated the stars and stripes from their winter 
quarters at F'ort Mandan — located at the extreme 
lower end of this same point. 

The last tragic occurrence, and one most fruitful 
of conversation at, McCali's shacks on the night 
here mentioned, was an event of the preceding 
autumn. A party of fifteen Gros Ventres had 
come down from their village for an elk hunt 
and among the party was a young Uncpapa Sioux 
who had been living with the Gros Ventres for 
for some time. The party spread out for a drive 
in the upper end of the point. When the drive 
was over the young Sioux did not re^-urn. A 
Gros Ventre boy said he had shot at something 
red and was too frightened or excited to examine 
as to the result of his shot. Rumor haa it that 
the Sioux youngster was entirely too gay with the 
Gros Ventre girls to suit the beaus of that tribe, 
and a projected elk hunt was one of the ways 



157 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

taken to put him to a quietus.* 

The Bismarck hunters communicated to us the 
finding of a keg full of something marked ''port 
wine." They had found it on the cut bank of a 
frozen sand bar of the Missouri and far out in mid 
stream, and had evidently floated down from the 
steamer that was snagged and sunk at Dauphin's 
Rapids many years before. The steamer's cargo 
was principally wines and whiskies and this was 
not the first finc^ credited to that Ill-fated steamer. . 
Bloody Knife whose taste for firewater had not 
waned, was willing to test it, the hunters not having 
the courage. It might be poisoned. The test was 
eminently satisfactory to my hunting partner. 

Early the next morning I had our ponies and 
sleds ready before the door, and reminded my 
red partner that the elk were awaiting us down 
the river. Bloody Knife looked up to the two 
hunters faces — as though to read them, then a 
wistful look at the keg under their bunk, when, 
with an emphatic gesture, spoke out loudly: 

''Right here I stay!" 

Thus it was dissolution and divergence came, 
with the hunting partner-ship, and with it, a fur- 
ther lease of life for the elk herds south of 
Lake Mandan. 

The final act to the drama in which these two 



*Fif teen years after the killing of the Sioux, his 
bones were found by Peter Gradin who lived near 
this point. A Winchester rifle lay by his side, and 
there is no doubt as to his identity. 



y SB 


^ 


t^ ^^\ 






I 


,) 




I 


1 






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1 


k 





LITTLE BIG HORN RIVER, 

Ford where Gen. Custer attempted to cross to 

attack Indian Village. 



BLOODY KNIFE AND GALL. 158 

actors entered as leading stars was on the now 
historic field of Little Big Horn, June 25, 1896. 
Bloody Knife entered the erena as a mere scout, 
but one whom his commander had the utmost 
confidence. Surviving scouts say that he seemed 
of have a premonition of disaster and did not 
show that spirit of reckless bravado in danger's 
face that had formerly given him so much notoriety. 
On that fateful morning when the cavalry com- 
mand separated into wings for the compression 
and destruction of the Sioux village, Reynolds, 
Bloody Knife, Bob Tail Bull and Girard — the 
four most noted and valuable scouts in Terry's 
command were assigned with Major Reno. Al- 
most the first to fall at the commencement of the 
action between Reno's detachment and the op- 
posing Sioux was Bloody Knife. A ball went 
crashing through his head as he rode by Major 
Reno's side and his brains were scattered over the 
uniform of that officer, which circumstance his de- 
tractors say threw Reno into panic, and not push- 
ing his advantage at a critical time lost the battle 
and left Custer and his immediate command to 
their fate. 

In the order of distribution with the Indian 
army, the forces under chief Gall was within call 
near the centre of the great village and it was at 
this point that General Custer directed his force 
to the ford of the Little Big Horn river and made 
an attempt to cross the stream with the evident 
intention of charging through the village at that 
point. But Gall had his Sioux force so well dis- 



159 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

tributed that he compelled a retreat of his foe 
in a short time thereafter, but not until several 
cavalrymen had fallen from their saddles into the 
water, and with the Ogallalla chief Crazy Horse 
and the Cheyenne Two Moons, Gall as the centre 
of the trio must receive — as he does — full credit 
from friend or foe for his active and commanding 
leadership from the firing of the first to the 
last gun in that desperate race conflict among the 
ravines, brush and bluffs of the Little Big Horn. 

The wild orgies of the savage victors the night 
following the annihilation of Custer and his men 
was of such a weird and terror inspiring nature 
that it remains among the incidents ever present 
in the memory of the surviving command under 
Reno and Benteen entrenched on the hill nearby, 
and much more so to Lieutenent DeRudio, Inter- 
preter Girard and the two Jackson boys, cut off, 
and surrounded as they were, and as one of them 
expresses it, **playing beaver" among the drift 
piles of the Litde Big Horn stream. Dante's In- 
ferno was a mild representation in comparison to 
the fanatical ravings of the exhultant Cheyenne 
victors that was being enacted within two hundred 
yards of their desperate place of hiding. 

Chief Gall — stoic that he was — had remained 
impassive to the scenes about him after the day's 
work of blood was over — and he might have con- 
tinued so throughout the night had not the severed 
head of Bloody Knife been brought before him. 
A broad smile crossed over his face as he spoke 
out joyously as interpreted from his Sioux: 

''Now that my vilest enemy is dead I can join 
you in the dance." 



A ROMANTIC ENCOUKTHR. 

OTHER than of a legendary character among 
the two peoples which is much at variance 
and without data, the cause of or stated time as 
to the beginning of hostilities between the Sioux 
and the Ancaree branch of the Pawnee nation is 
unknown to the historian, but probably had its 
commencement with the northern march of the 
Pawnees from the plains of southern Kansas and 
northern Tex3s which must have taken place at 
the beginning of the sixteenth century. 

The first authentic records we have of the Ar- 
icarees proper, date from the Lewis and Clark 
exploring expedition up the Missouri river, 1804, 
Some account was made as to their earlier history 
by these explorers and of the situation in which 
they found them. They made note of the refusal 
of the Aricarees to accept whiskey from their 
hands and of their words of rebuke to the officers 
in proffering them a substance that would take 
away their wits. The explorers represented the 
Aricarees at this time as serving a kind of vassel- 
age under the Sioux owing to an open war with 
northern tribes, and of having to depend on the 
good offices of the Sioux for their siipply of guns 
powder and balls through their intermediary with 
the American fur company traders located in the 
heart of the Sioux country. 



161 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

In general characteristics the Aricarees were 
regarded by the early fur traders and voyagers 
akin to the Ismaelites of old, and something of 
the order of the fierce Stataans, that at one time 
inhabited the branches along the headwaters of the 
Platte river, before their extermination by the 
neighboring tribes. 

When Lewis and Clark visited the Aricarees, 
they were in two large villages located on the 
north side of Grand river where they remained 
until after the troubles with the fur traders which 
culminated in the military expedition under Col. 
Leavenworth to these Indian towns during the 
summer of 1823. At this time the Aricaree war- 
riors were reputed to muster about six hundred 
warriors while the opposing force of soldiers, 
frontiersmen and Sioux numbered eleven hundred 
fighters — all told. The allied hosts appeared be- 
fore the lower village on the 9th of August and 
the overconfident Sioux made a rush for the de- 
fenders of the first town, and although inflicting a 
much greater loss on the besieged than they them- 
selves suffered, yet the Aricarees at nightfall were 
left masters of the situation. 

On the morning of the loth. Col. Leavenworth 
brought up his artillery and began a bombard- 
ment of the hapless town. The first shot from 
the big guns killed the Aricaree chief Gray Eyes, 
an Indian of great resolution and rare gift of com- 
mand. His death threw the besieged in a panic 
that would have been fatal, had the Sioux sup- 
ported the soldiers at that critical time in a gen- 







SON-OF-THE-STAR, 
Aricaree Chief. 



A ROMANTIC ENCOUNTER. i62 

eral assault on the frail defensive works of their 
enemies. But the impatient Sioux were not in a 
pleasant mood from the tardy action of their allies 
the day previous, so instead of helping the white 
soldiers with their bloody work contented them- 
selves with pillaging the Aricaree cornfields 

About the time of these happenings a child was 
born in the Ancaree camp that was destined to 
be the Moses of the tribe in its equally perilious 
days and years that would come after. This child 
was brought forth by the wife of Star Robe a war- 
rior of much reputation. The child became known 
as Son-of-the-Stars and in his own good time be- 
came chief councillor and head soldier to his tribe 
One of the Yanktoney Sioux sub-chiefs who 
had distinguished himself in this fight before the 
Aricaree towns, returned home to find that he too 
had a son born to him about this time. This child 
also grew up to man's estate, and passed through 
without flinching, that terrible ordeal of the mys'tic 
sun dance through which he must pass before he 
could hope to take his place among the warriors 
pf his tribe. He early earned a proud name by 
his activity in the chase, his ability in the council 
house and p. -wess in war. He was called Matto 
Nompa or .;,. Two Bears. The chiefs animosity 
was usually directed against the Aricarees but he 
found a foeman chief not to be despised in the 
person of the Aricaree chieftain who like himself 
was foremost to brook an insult or fight a battle 

While the Aricarees were forced to give up 
their homes on the Grand or Rees Own river yet 



163 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

theirs were of spirits unsubdued — be the calamity 
ever so crushing or the hope of better days a 
maddening dream. They were forced to bury 
the tomahawk with the Mandans and Gros Ven- 
tres and enter into an alliance with them for self 
preservation from the encroaching and all power- 
ful Sioux. The Aricarees suffered with their allies 
from the small pox epidemic of 1837, and its re- 
curring visitation eleven years later, but were 
never so decimated in number but what they could 
meet every attack from their enemies by a counter 
move of the same kind. 

While the allied tribes had first settled near 
each other as neighbors, about the year 1862 the 
three peoples made convergence at the Gros Ven- 
tre camp afterwards more particularly known as 
Fort Berthold. While the village or town as a 
whole was in common, each tribe had its distinctive 
quarter. In their war raids against the common 
enemy each tribe conducted its own rule of conduct 
especially in the down river raids by bull boats. 
The Aricaree chief had early made himself a spe- 
cial terror to the Yanktoney under Two Bear's 
leadership as well as the non descript T-wo Kettle 
band located still further down the Missouri. 

In the summer of 1868, Son-of-the Star made 
ready for a long promised trip to his relatives- — 
the Wolf Pawnees of Nebraska. These Pawnees 
were then residing on the Loup Fork of Platte 
river. He took passage on a steamer returning 
to St. Louis from a season trip to Fort Benton the 
navigation terminus of the Upper Missouri. In his 




Fort Benton in 1870. 



A ROMANTIC ENCOUNTER. 164 

passage through the Sioux agencies he was com- 
pelled to keep in his cabin and be content with 
peeking, unobserved through the windows, to 
note the smiles and frowns of his enemies as they 
gathered — all unconscious of his presence — at 
the agency landings. This was particularly his 
situation at Grand River agency almost at the 
very spot, where forty-five years before, his own 
people had demanded from Ensign Prior the per- 
son of the Mandan chief, Big White, then on his 
return from Washington. The Government had 
pledged the Mandan's safe return to his tribe, to 
which task the ensign accompanied by an escort 
of soldiers had been been detailed to accomplish. 
Yet notwithstanding the fact of their reinforce- 
ment by General Ashly and a considerable body of 
trappers and frontiersmen, the refusal to deliver 
over their hostage on demand, was a signal for 
an assault by the Arricarees, and who succeeded 
in driving the boatmen and their vessels back and 
down the river to their starting point. 

With Son-of-the-Star, while the case was some- 
what analogous the situation varied. He could 
see and not be seen by his enemies and while the 
knowledge of his presence on the boat may have 
led to commotion if not to a hostile demonstration 
on the part of the Sioux, but the boat's captain 
pilot and crew were in position to *'move on" with 
but little danger of bodily harm to their charge. 

At the new agency site at Whetstone creek for 
the upper Brule Sioux, the Aricaree chief came 
upon the forward deck togged out in his robes 



165 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

as becomes an important chief. He had passed 
in safety the gauntlet of personal enemies and 
had only the tribal ones to fear. The agency was 
being selected with a view of bringing the Platte 
river Sioux over to become permanent residents 
of the Missouri river country, and but few of 
them had as yet put in their appearance there 
when the steamer bearing the Aricaree chief was 
passing down stream. But on the bank facing the 
Aricaree stood a tall manly form — more haughty 
than he — and effected the same stoical indiffer- 
ence to the others presence. This man on the 
bank was the noted Indian orator, Spotted Tail, 
chief of the Brule Sioux. His wife and daughter 
ter stood by his side and looked out on the boat 
and its crew with same supreme indifference as did 
the head of the house, and formost representative 
of the Sioux nation. Spotted Tail was an ideal 
leader and a strong, great brained one. But his 
after fate followed along the lines from King 
Philip of Pokoket, Logan, and Pontiac of other 
days to Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull of recent date 
— namely, jealousy or fear, followed by treachery 
assassination and death. Spotted Tail was slain 
from ambush by a jealous sub-chief of his own 
band. This tragic event happened about three 
years after the scene above described. 

Before starting on his long journey through his 
enemies to the Pawnees the Aricaree chief had 
thoughtfully named as his representative and pos- 
sible successor his favorite son — Swift Runner — 
an ambitious young man anxious to follow in the 




Spotted Tail, 

One of the most Renouned of the Sioux Chieftians, 
With Wife and Daug-hter. 



A ROMANTIC ENCOUNTER. 166 

footsteps of his father who was ahiiost worshiped 
by his tribe. The young man had as yet seen but 
Httle practical service in the field of war and this 
fact spurred him on to quickly attempt something 
as a leader that would bring credit to himself and 
wholesome respect from the enemies of his peo- 
ple. Dispite the attempts of the more peaceably 
disposed in the tribes to make formal peace, the 
hotheads and malcontents had their way and the 
strife continued. Son-of-the-Star had hardly got 
a good start upon his journey to the Pawnees be- 
for a war party of the Two Kettle band from the 
Crow Creek agency appeared in the bad lands 
east of Fort Berthold, and for want ot a more 
substantial catch counted their '^coos" on a party 
of agency haymakers. During the cold winter of 
1868-9 the terror inspired by lurking bands of 
hostile Sioux was so great that gaunt famine 
stalked in almost every lodge among the allied 
bands at Fort Berthold. And at the opening of 
spring the food situation had not improved much. 
Village hunters became the hunted and both the 
ponies and the game they packed became the 
property of the persevering and crafty Sioux. 

What must be done? 1 hat was the question 
asked among the wise heads every night at the 
counsel house. The venerable White Shields 
set in his place wrapped in a pictured robe that 
told of deeds that had brought him both honor 
and fame. But he was a broken reed now with 
the aches and pains that follow the hardships of 
near seventy years in the Upper Missouri country. 



167 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

Others must come forward now. He was done. 
This was Swift Runners opportunity and he em- 
braced it. He would lead. Who would follow? 

He would strike his enemies and strike them 
hard. Better to die at war than sit looking in an 
empty soup kittle. Who would go with him? — 
The ice was out of the river and the snow had 
melted from the hills. It was time to go. Such 
was the harangue Swift Runner gave. To his 
appeal twenty young and courageous men gave 
answer. They would follow the bold youth whom 
their tried leader had chosen to carry the pipe. 

About the middle of April 1869 — at the hour 
of midnight — seven well manned bull boats floated 
out from under the shadows of the Indian village 
at Fort Berthold and drifted down with the swift 
current of the channel. The venerable Medicine 
Lance the high priest of the Aricarees sat on the 
bank and smoked his pipe alone in the darkness 
long after the muffled sound of the voyagers had 
passed away. The flower of the Aricaree youths 
were in those boats and he made offenng to the 
spirits of the rolling deep and asked them to be 
kind to those that he had just consigned to their 
charge. 

In the dark days of the allied tribes at Fort 
Berthold there was a beacon of light and hope to 
which the eyes of these hunted beings were ever 
turning. This was the good ofifices of Medicine 
Bear, chief of the Upper Yanktoney. He was 
wise and just, bold and true. His mother as a 



A ROMANTIC ENCOUNTER, 168 

child was one of the few that were saved from 
cruel death in the destruction of the upper Man- 
dan village on Apple creek by the confederated 
bands of northern Sioux which occurred sometime 
after the middle of the eighteenth century. The 
Mandans of this village were loth to leave their 
home though they were importuned to do so by 
their more alert and observing brethren who had 
fled to the banks of the Missouri some years be- 
fore that they might be better able to cope with a 
foe so numercially strong as the roving Sioux of 
the plains. The heedless and tardy remained in 
their old homes undl the Sioux needed scalps for 
the dance when the heads of Mandans would be 
obtained from the Apple creek village for the oc- 
casion. 

Medicine Bear was more ot an ideal jurist than 
the average composition of which a chief was 
made. He arose as the leader of his tribe more 
from his wisdom in diplomacy than his courage or 
skill in the arts of cruel war. That his young 
men would steal out Iromhis camp by twos, fours, 
sixes or more, to make predatory foray on some 
neighboring tribe or wood camp was what might 
be expected from the laxity or loose form of gov- 
ermental control of a chief with the mild man- 
nered ways of Medicine Bear. As a tribe Med- 
icine Bear's camp was at peace with the world, but 
as individuals — save the chief alone — they were at 
war with almost every tribe or clan on the north- 
ern buffalo range. 

In contra to his bringing up and environments, 



169 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

Medicine Bear was at heart a Mandan. "Blood will 
tell" saith the proverb, and it so proved in Medi- 
cine Bear's case. Of Mandan blood he loved 
that people even though chief of an alien tribe. 
Every year with a chosen band he left his mam 
camp on the Popular river for a friendly visit with 
the Mandans, Gros Ventres and Aricarees of Ft. 
Berthold. He would bring them buffalo meat in 
abundance and would return home with his po- 
nies well laden with dried squashes and corn. His 
welcome home would be hearty albeat he carried 
no trophy poles with fresh, bleeding scalps hang- 
ing therefrom. 

Through the avenue we here have shown, 
parties of Sioux announcing their arrival from 
Medicine Bear's camp was sure of a generous 
welcome from the Mandans and their allies. The 
stay of the visitors might run its length into days, 
weeks and even months, yet the burden of hos- 
pitality never grew too heavy for the entertainers. 

Thus was the situation when a party of eight 
Sioux warriors widi two women entered the win- 
ter quarters of the Aricarees from the north early 
in April 1869. They had come down from Med- 
icine Bear's camp on the Poplar — and had left the 
old man well. Two or three of the Sioux faces 
were familiar to the Aricarees but most of the 
new guests seemed as strangers. But placed on 
their tenure of hospitality they would make no 
especial enquiry. They had come from a friend's 
camp and that was enough. Thus philosophized 
the Aricaree entertainers. 



A ROMANTIC ENCOUNTER. 170 

The personality in one of the Sioux visitors was 
noticeable. This one was the youngest of the 
two- women. She was vivacious and comely — 
with restless and inquiring ways. She matched in 
age Cleopatria, the Egyptian queen, when that 
brown beauty beguiled the heart of Mark Antony 
in their moonlit tete-a-tetes on the Nile. But while 
the Egyptian coquette cast her spell on but one at 
a time, this native hypnotist from Medicine Bear's 
camp had seemingly bevviched the Aricaree tribe 
as a whole. When the band moved down from 
winter quarters to the village proper, the visitors 
followed, and the actions of this Sioux woman was 
marked in many ways. She was ever visiting 
from one lodge to the other and from tribe to 
tribe, loquacious in speech and with prymg eyes. 
vShe durst not enter the medicine lodge but could 
see who did enter there. On the night of the 
departure of the Aricaree war party, the long ab- 
sence of the Medicine Lance who had went to 
see them safely started, not having returned to his 
home as early as was expected, his two brothers 
Sharp Horn and Painted Man v/ere notified and, 
v;ho, being high up in medicine lodge council, 
had knovv^ledge of the point of bull boat debark- 
ation. The place was in front of where the old 
saw mill had stood on the bottom and near by a 
pile of logs. About two months before, among 
these very logs a war party of Sioux had hidden 
themselves as support of a small band of assas- 
sins sent up through the village under cover of 
darkness to hunt out and steathily slay their vie- 



171 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

tinis. But on the occasion referred to, through the 
blunder of a premature shot by a Sioux, but one 
Aricaree scalp was secured by this well planned 
scheme of midnight assasination. 

While in quest of their brother, Sharp Horn 
and Painted Man passed the log pile with their 
memories brought to mind of the Sioux war party 
in hiding, when to their mystification some one 
arose from the opposite side of the pile and glided 
away in the gloom. They seemed sure the object 
was a woman and one very light of tread. At 
the water's edge Medicine Lance was found sit- 
ting in revere smoking away at his pipe in the 
darkness. He was accosted and all three went 
up the hill to the Aricaree quarter, when, with 
a mutual ''good night" each took seperate ways 
for his own lodge. 

On entering his domicile, Painted Man was 
treated to a surprise. The Sioux woman afore 
mentioned stood at his door. It was in his house 
she had been quartered since coming down from 
the winter village, and seemed to be without wifely 
fealty to any one in particular — hence her where- 
abouts was not made note of and her absence un- 
questioned. When the light fell full in her face 
there was no confusion or betrayal by emotion — 
though her moccasins and leggins gave eviden'ce 
from their moppled and bedraggled condition, 
of her having been beyond the village environ- 
ments. She went to the crib assio^ned as her 
sleeping apartment but was up and about in time 
to hear the village crier make his morning call 



A ROMANTIC ENCOUNTER. 172 

from the house top of the medicuie lodge. It did 
not occur to the Arlcarrees to make quiet roll call 
of their Sioux visitors after the departure of the 
war party under Swift Runner. Had they done 
so there would have had one marked * 'absent 
and unaccounted for." Also on the departure of 
the guests which came to pass three days later, 
the party headed down stream and not up river 
as was to have been expected. It was plain to 
all who would see that it was the camp of Two 
Bears and his lower Yanktoneys and not that of 
Medicine Bear, of Poplar^ they would seek. 

The camp of the Sioux chief Two Bears was 
frequently on the move much of the early spring 
and summer of 1869. During the major part of 
April they shifted camp along the river bends be- 
tween the valley of the Hermorphidite on the 
south and Beaver creek on the north. Two Bears 
had earned a reputation for success in warfare — 
but he was getting old and although his wise and 
safe counsels would be consulted as of yore yet 
younger men must lead in the hardships and trials 
of active war. Who would be the partizan of his 
band and carry the pipe on the war trail? 

The answer came readily. His eldest son was 
ambitious to lead. The young man had followed 
his father through every danger since he was big 
enough to carry a bow or a gun or old enough 
to ride ahorse. By close companionship he knew 
his father's method of war, and had profited by 
his wisdom in the council lodge. The sub chiefs 



173 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

waived all right of precedence and would checr- 
ftilly lend such aid to the young leader when the 
need for help would present itself. 

The call for aid came quick enough. A runner 
bearing word from their enemies, reigned up his 
tired out pony before the lodge of Two Bears 
and told of a decending war party of Aricarees 
in bull boats whose purpose was to strike the 
Yanktoney camp. All were in excitement and 
tribulation now that the enemy was actually on 
the water and not far from above their camp which 
at the time numbered thirty-seven teepes. Forty 
mounted warriors were started off at once under 
young Two Bears with mstructions from the old 
chief to scan the river and timber points carefully 
until the Aricarees were met with and then to 
destroy them if possible — or at any cost to them- 
selves — kill all they could. 

Runners were started across to Fort Rice with 
with instructions to the Sioux scouts located there 
to scan the river carefully at that point and report 
to young Two Bears at once when the bull boats 
were sighted. The Sioux moved slowly up the 
east bank of the river until near the mouth of 
Apple creek when two or three bull boats were 
found afloat in the water but upon inspection were 
without occupants. A few miles further along a 
cache of these boats was found in a line of wil- 
lows. There was here presented an enigma for 
the Sioux to solve. Had the Aricarees abandoned 
for a strike by land or were they in full retreat? 
The floating bull boats made the latter theory 




OKOOS-TERICKS AKD FRIEXDS, 

Four of the Bravest of the Ariearee Warriors in their 
Wars Against the Sioux from 1864 to 1876. 



A ROMANTIC ENCOUNTER. 174 

seem the most probable. The sight of the boats 
even as "empties" would give warning to the en- 
emy, and who when aroused could fill every tim- 
ber point with a war party on short notice — for 
when common danger threatened, all the Sioux 
bands between Fort Rice and the Cheyenne river 
would stand as one. And a bull boat adrift be- 
tween the points named was a signal of danger 
to all of Sioux blood, be they man, women or child. 

The visiting party from Medicine Bear's camp 
reached Fort Stevenson on the evening of the 
same day that they had ridden away from the 
Aricaree quarter of the allied village at Fort 
Berthold. They made camp near the scouts new 
building west of the garrison and were treated as 
guests by chief Big John and his red soldiers in 
their regulation blue. Of the two Sioux women 
with the visiting party, more interest was shown 
to the older of the two — reversing their reception 
in the Aricaree camp. This came about through 
a remark from Red Dog — a half cast Sioux and 
Aricaree scout — and one who had seen much and 
not given to idle talk. He had asked some of 
his fellow scouts to note some peculiar painting 
on that woman's face and mark her silent cogita- 
tion. She was as repellent to attention as her com- 
panion had courted it, and kept her face hooded 
with her blanket from the eyes of the inquisitive 
or over curious. Intimates she had none, but had 
now and then a few words aside with her joyous 
and mesmeric companion. There was also a very 



175 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

noticeable contrast in the dress of the two women. 
While the younger was attired in blue cheviot 
bodice with red leggings and a three point scarlet 
blanket hung *'squaw fashion" over her shapely 
form. Her small feet w^ere encased in mocassins 
fancifully decorated in colored bead work. On the 
other hand the senior matron was plainly attired 
in an old fashioned skin dress of the Indians' more 
primitive days. Her only attempt at dress orna- 
mentation was a wide body belt studded with 
brass headed tacks and a breast plate of elk 
molars. Plain and unostentatious as washer per- 
sonal appearance, Red Dog's remark that she was 
'^medicine" drew attention to her every move- 
ment by her entertainers and their friends until 
after the entire party of visiting Sioux had passed 
Garrison creek, beyond the fort, in the early 
morning following. 

In the comparatively quiet and peaceful days 
to the antelope that ranged the broken bluffs be- 
tween Turtle and Buffalo Paunch creeks, w^hich 
covered the two decades from i860 to 1880, the 
particular play ground and watering place for 
these beautiful animals was in the immediate vi- 
cinity of what is known in these more modern 
days as Casselmann's landing. Its immediate lo- 
cation IS about one mile below where the Buffalo 
Paunch makes its small contribution to the waters 
of the Missouri. The river at this point makes 
an angle and laves its waters against a low line 
of bluffs usually called the ''second bench" lands, 



A ROMANTIC ENCOUNTER. 176 

and forms, by its hard, rocky soil a strong barrier 
to the caprices of the ever changing banks of the 
river in its windings through the bottom or made 
lands where the forests of willows, cottonwoods 
and kindred vegitation find healthy sustainance 
and vigorous life. 

Antelope, besides being fleet of foot, have good 
ear drums and eyes quick at sight and with a 
range equal to the human optic as most hunters 
who have knowledge of these animals can testify. 
This fording place below the mouth of Buffalo 
Paunch creek had been long known not only as a 
frequent watering place but one of the principal 
fording places of the migratory bands of antelope 
in their search for greener pastures and in trying 
to evade a too close fellowship with the wolves 
and coyotes that hovered about them in lambing 
time. The wolf would — as a rule — rather give 
up his prey than take a swim to secure it. 

It is with a band of perhaps fifty in number of 
these observing animals that we will merge our 
personality for a few hours, and see only with an 
antelope's eyes and hear only through an ante- 
lope's ears. This band had just come down from 
the breaks about Fort Clark on the west side and 
were bound for the east bank of the Missouri, 
although the air was chilly and the water ice cold. 
But their purpose was a fixed one, so, following 
their old leaders who had buffed the wild waters 
in many similar expeditions, plunged to their icy 
bath, and with heads quartering up stream, sawed 
the sdff current with their nimble legs, until reach- 



177 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

ing the edies along the opposite shore. With a 
gay bound they sherried up the bank jumping and 
frisking over the bench land until reaching a high 
point where they halted and turned in circles, 
as they climbed each projecting point. 

As the antelope ascended the highest bluffs 
they made cursory survey of their environments 
as is usual with their kind. The wind was blow- 
ing hard and raw from the southeast — a rift 
of dull grey clouds were passing rapidly over- 
head and tiny flecks of half hail, half snow, was 
falling from them. The keen scent of the ante- 
lope detected a something to the south of them 
and curiosity — the great weakness of these ani- 
mals in early summer — impelled them forward 
until the object or objects making this scent could 
be detected with the eye. Keeping the ridge with 
a resolute old buck in advance, the band of curi- 
osity seekers marched nearly one mile before 
they came to a full stop. Away down the bench- 
land near the breaks of Turtle creek an enemy, 
more destructive to their kind than the ferocious 
wolves, was sighted. This was a party of the 
human kind — perhaps twenty in all — following each 
other as does their own kind on the march — in 
single file. These oncomers were easily recog- 
nized as to specie by the antelope and beheld 
their appearance with much tribulation. They 
were of the Indian race — on foot — and with guns, 
pikes and bows swinging across their backs and 
walking along at the foot of the main ridge in a 
wearysome sort of way. They had evidently came 



. A ROMANTIC ENCOUNTER. 178 

without rest for some distance as was shown in 
their motions. The old buck on the hill must 
have divined something of this kind for he stood 
with his head and prong horns erect — fully ex- 
posed to the view of his oncoming enemies, yet 
gave no signal of alarm to his own followers who 
stood like a bunch of sand hill cranes watchino- 
unguarded lines. Beyond changing his position 
in halt circles the guardian of his flock did not 
loose his interest in the intruders, and when with- 
in a mile of his lookout seemed satisfied when — 
after crossing a coulee at the base of the high 
ridge facing the river saw one after the other as 
they arrived at this point lay flat upon the ground 
except one who remained in a sitting position. 

About this time another line of people mounted 
upon fleet horses came up from a deep coulee 
near the breaks of Turtle creek. They appeared 
to be traveling at a more rapid rate and were in 
greater numbers than the footmen who had pre- 
ceeded them. The presence of the mounted peo- 
ple threw the watchful antelope into consternation 
and some minutes later a regular panic by the re- 
ports of guns as the horsemen reached the point 
near where the resting footmen lay. The animals 
then bunched and scampered northward to the 
next projecting point where another surprise was 
awaiting them. Near the river bank opposite to 
them was siill another party — much smaller than 
die odiers and all mounted, with two traveauxs in 
trailing. A mounted figure in scarlet led the ad- 
vance and all were traveling at a rapid gait south- 



179 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

ward. A red waving blanket was no enticement to 
the antelope now- only adding terror to their hearts 
and with the fleetness of a soaring bird they passed 
from the sight and sound of the commingling clans. 

From the antelopes' first view of what proved 
to be a romantic encounter, the narrator now 
seeks the plain statement of Two Bulls and other 
survivors of a drama in which the only audience 
were the fifty antelope — and they stampeded at 
the raising of the curtain in the first act. 

The party of footmen that had first appeared 
to the antelope was the war party of twenty Aric- 
arees under Swift Runner. They had been trav- 
eling all night — and were without food or blankets. 
The little stock of parched corn and dried buffalo 
meat that they had started from home with was 
exhausted. It was nearing the noon hour when 
the advance came to a small circle of unburned 
prairie across the coulee — a little north of west of 
the present site of Washburn, McLean's capital. 
Having no blankets these tufts presented the one 
opportunity for a nap though thoroughly moist- 
ened by a constant falling of sleet and snow. 

In ten minutes after their arrival nearly every 
warrior was in slumber save the sentinel who faced 
their backward trail. He too, was almost asleep 
when his heavy eyes caught sight of something 
raising from a coulee a mile away, when he yelled 
in alarm: **Sonona — Sonona" (Sioux — Sioux) and 
a moment later thirty Sioux warriors all mounted 
on fleet horses with uncovered guns in their hands 



A ROMANTIC ENCOUNTER. 180 

moved down upon the startled — half dazed sleep- 
ers, yelling like demons. The Aricarees followed 
down the coulee shooting as they ran until the 
little group of hills formed by an old land slide 
was reached. Here another party of Sioux fired 
from ambush and a Sioux woman urged her war- 
riors "to be strong." She was killed and scalped 
and another war woman in scarlet pulled from her 
horse and scalped alive. Young Two Bears the 
Sioux leader being superbly mounted, Fighting 
Bear an Aricaree brave from his position in the 
slide, shot and killed him while leading a flanking 
party trying to intercept his enemy before they 
could reach the timber. Bear Robe supporting 
Fighting Bear, rushed forward and secured the 
Sioux chiefs horse amid a shower of arrows, buck- 
shot and bullets but came forward with his booty, 
unscratched. The Aricarees being fought in front 
and flank by twice their number retreated to the 
west or upper end of the dunes or hills thence to 
the river bank. Here, Swift Runner, oblivious 
to his own personal safety, standing on the edge 
seeing that his men were all safe, drew attention 
from a Sioux marksman and fell over the bank 
mortally wounded. He was helped to the cap- 
tured horse and tied on the saddle. The Arica- 
rees finding their young leader shot became so 
wrought up that they climbed the high point from 
the river only to find the Sioux in full retreat 
bearing their dead upon traveauxs. 

In the early morning of May 24, 1869, thechoni- 



181 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

cler of the events herein narrated, was moving 
about the Aricaree quarter of the Indian village 
at Berthold when cries and lamentations issuing 
from Son of the Stars lodge attracted attention, 
and I entered its spacious room to find a hundred 
or more Indian women crymg, cutting off fingers 
and otherwise mutilating themselves. On a couch 
lay a form breathing heavily surrounded by the 
medicine men and chief councillors of the tribe. 
This scene witnessed the closing moments of Swift 
Runner's life — the end of his father's hopes and his 
own ambitions. 

Again good memory recalls a scene of the early 
seventies, being also sequel to this romantic com- 
bat. Posing on a scaffold, and wrapped in scarlet 
cloths, resting^ on an ancient burying ground near 
the south shore of Painted Woods lake could be 
seen— seasons in and seasons out — from the spring 
of 1869 to that of 1873, a lone bier containing all 
that was mortal of the young Sioux chieftain, who 
prior to that fatal encounter in the sand dunes — 
had hopes and dreams for his life planned for a far 
different setting. 

The body of the brave priestess of fate — the 
war woman — was given scant courtesy and hidden 
away without ritual. Her mission was fullfiled. 
Time, the great leveler of all things had done its 
work swiftly here — and adjusted the lines of justice 
and of equality disregarded at the burial place — 
honors to the one, neglect or scant courtesy to the 
other. The finale followed the great ice gorge 
on the upper Missouri river in the early spring 
of 1873. since when the bier of the chief and the 
cached bones of the mystic woman from Medicine 
Bear's camp have alike disappeared from mortal 
ken. 




An Indian Burial Ground on Upper Missouri River. 
From a photo by Morrow in 1870. 



THE CLOSING STORY. 

DATING from the consolidation of the principal 
fur interests of the Northwest into what 
was styled the American Fur Company, which 
event came to pass about the year 1830 — the 
wild inhabitants of the Upper Missouri country 
were on the threshold of a great change. A change 
to be dreaded and feared by these unsophisticated 
peoples — and well they may have feared. 

In the thousands of years of their existance on 

these high treeless plains — life succeeding life 

death succeeding death, with no more precept- 
ible change to them in thr. face of time's passage 
than that which came and went with the life of the 
buffalo, from whose flesh these nomads fed. The 
millions upon millions of small round circles of 
stones that everywhere make plastic sign in the 
upper Missouri river country, is the plain and in- 
delible record of the thousands of years of non- 
progressive, unchnngable Indian life. 

The introduction of the fur and hide hunter 
working under corporate control as paid hirelings 
in the Indian country was a change — but a sad 
one for all existing animal life in an arcadia pecu- 
liarly and fittingly these animals own. The red in- 
habitants who had claimed their very beginning had 
sprung from the stones of the prairie must now 



183 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

make welcome to a people bearing a white heat 
that would melt away these decendents of the 
rocks. The change would be rapid. The caldron of 
seething genii enveloped in fumes would spread 
its contaminating effects to everything with life in 
it. Its mission was to destroy — to supplant — to 
make over or make new. 

It was the expected that came in this instance. 
Within the compass of seventy years animated 
nature in that region had wholly changed. The 
vast areas that had supported and kept fat the buf- 
falo, elk, deer, antelope, beaver and the numerous 
species of its native bird kinds, which had roamed 
and swarmed in countless myriads there, had for 
the most part disappeared, and some of the species 
leaving barely a trace of their being, when the new 
kinds had came in the fullness of possession. 
This may be in the order of evolution. It may 
mean a survival of the fittest — but some of us 
cannot be made to think so. 

The territory embraced within the lands of 
of this great fur company consolidation contained 
the homes and hunting grounds of many strong, 
self-reliant Indian nations or tribes who were ex- 
pected to be under control of their new masters, 
and who aimed to assume practical guardianship 
of all these Indian peoples who then dwelt within 
their cordon, and absolute control of the lives and 
property of the thousands who lived along the 
entire twelve hundred miles beginning with the 
Sioux country on the south and ending in the 
Blackfoot territory on the north, was in the keeping 



^!3B 



THE CLOSING STORY. 184 

of Pierre Choteaii and other controlling spirits of 
that great ae^gregation. The wildest dreams of 
Biirr and Blenerhasset was being literally carried to 
fulfilment in the northwestern corner of their once 
projected empire— but so unostentatious in manner 
and so practical in method were these masters of 
traffic and trade in the then little known Upper 
Missouri and tributary country with its resources of 
wealth and area, it was suffered to pass without 
question — without interest even by the authorities 
at the Federal seat of government. 

While the reign of the autocrats of the fur 
companies was not a long one, probably of fifty 
years, and toward its close the Government at 
Washington gradually contracted the territory of 
the former until only the extreme northern portion 
remained as the play ground of the fur traders, 
and even within that territory they suffered re- 
striction and to a considerable extent were shorn 
of that absolutism in the management of the na- 
tive Indian tribes to which they had first arrogantly 
claimed assumption to power of overlordship only 
by reason of the occupation of certain desirable 
sites in the Indian country, and their given rights 
to trade within. 

In those days of the American Fur Company's 
regime, Indian agents though usually appointed 
from Washington, received their recommendation 
from and were mere agents of the fur company 
lords and were held responsible to them as a cor- 
poration and not to the United States, for their 
official acts during the said agents tenure of office. 



185 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

With but few honorable exceptions this was the 
condition of affairs dating trom the arrival of 
Indian agent Sanford in the Indian country in the 
American Fur company boat Yellowstone in 1833, 
to the closing days of the Durfee & Peck com- 
pany m 1874. 

The advent of the military in what was after- 
ward known as the Division of Dakota made 
some changes in a local way, but the mediumship 
of post settlers and their influence with the ap- 
pointing power at Washington, the Durfee & 
Peck company continued in the lines of the old 
fur companies as masters of the situation in the 
Upper Missouri region and contiguous country. 
Indeed many minor officers at some of the mili- 
tary posts seemed entirely too willing to assist 
the great corporation against possible rivalry from 
the small tracing houses that had found encour- 
agement from some of the Indian tribes. 

It had ever been the policy not only of the In- 
dian traders but military also, stationed at interior 
posts in the Indian country to discourage the com- 
ing of the van of adventurous spirits seeking life 
of congeniality in the interior wilderness. It had 
been the practice of the fur companies in their 
latter days to discourage the advent of any one 
or the stay of any one not in their employ, about 
their own zone of action. Indian agents, also, 
discouraged the curiosity seeker, the traveler or 
the plain citizen • 'looking for a job." To assist 
along the same lines, General Stanley from his 
headquarters at Fort Sully, in August 1869, — 



THE CLOSING STOKY. 186 

issued his famous order No. 12 which was ex- 
pected to make clearance of the free citizen pop- 
ulation by fair means or foul.* Woodyards were 
specifically numbered as to the Sioux country, 
in line with the treaty of 1868 with these people, 
and soldiers discharged from the military posts 
were given transportation and hustled out of the 
country widiout delay, and with no preference as 



*An un}3leasant Bituation in which the chronicler 
of these sketches found himself a short time after 
General Stanley had issued his order No. 12 will 
show its workings when a military understrapper 
with little nerve and less sense is clothed witli its 
execution. During- the haying season of 18G9, T 
was employed by Contractor Dillon at Grand ]|iver 
agency as general guard owing to the hostile atti- 
tude of many of the Sioux bands encamped there. 
One day the last week in A " rust a brother of the 
Uncpapa chief Long Soldier armed himself with 
bow and arrows rode out to the agency cattle herd 
on Oak creek and seeking out the herder — a young 
man named Cook — commenced to shoot arrows in- 
to him without any apparent provocation. The 
herder was unarmed, and no means of defence ex- 
cept a "bull" whip which he applied vigorously to 
the Indians face, who became disconcerted thereat 
and allowed the herder to make his escape on his 
fleet pony to the agency. He barely reached there 
before fainting, as three arrows had entered his 
breast and were embedded firmly. It was found 
advisable to have the wounded man laken to Fort 
Sully and placed in the surgeon'o care there, and I 
was selected to take him down. The distance was 
over a hundred miles and for the most part without 
trail, and with the exception of the Little Cheyenne 
crossing — no wood on the route. Knowing this I 
laid in a supply of fuel at the Cheyenne and carried 
it thirty miles beyond to a lot of sink holes called 
Rock creek — where — before making a continuation 



187 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

to their remaining even though offered employ- 
ment or were given a chance opening for business. 
The order applied to all Indian reservations 
north of the Poncas and Yanktons and south 
from Fort Buford, which practically took in all the 
country on both sides of the Missouri between 

of the journey ^'cashed" the balance for the return 
trip from the fort. A few miles beyond the creek 
we came through a swail where we noted a fresh, 
heavy trail which we had supposed to be buffalo, 
and so reported on our arrival at the fort. But we 
here learned that the garrison herd had stampeded 
the previous night, and then rightly guessed these 
were the tracks we had seen. A sargeant came to 
us for precise information as to localit}^ which was 
cheerfully and correctly given and then I supposed 
the incident was closed. Leaving my patient for 
whose recovery the surgeon there had grave doubt, 
I made preparations for the homeward journey. 
Owing to the lateness in starting it was after dark 
when reaching sight of my expected camp — I found 
a surprise. A cheerful camp fire was burning, 
but my wood cache was feeding the flame. Acting 
on the information thus given, a lieutenant with a 
squad of men went out there — found the cattle first, 
the wood later on and set up camp at my expense. 
This would have been cheerfully given but that was 
not enough. The gallant (?) lieutenant, whose name 
as I remember it— was Hooton — was not only refus- 
ed the use of my own wood to cook supper but 
placed a guard over my wagon whose instructions 
from the officer was, '^shoot that man or his dog if 
the^^ stir from under the wagon." The dog was a 
faithful shepherd belonging to my employer and 
who was well fagged from his 70 miles per day jour- 
ney. To save the faithful animal from possible harm 
I used my pocket handkerchief for a dog collar. The 
officer made no explanation or apology for his mis- 
conduct, and surrounded thus by his soldiers and 
being a stranger to them all — was in no position to 
demand it. 




THE SNAKE— A Ponca Warrior 



THE CLOSING STORY. 188 

the points named. Being a navigable stream the 
Missouri river had been passed upon by the dis- 
trict court as a public highway and the right of 
passage and m.atters in connection therewith could 
not be legally interfeared with by any order em- 
inating from a post commander or the commander 
of a military division or department. While the 
military authorities had the unquestioned right 
to put their foot down hard on the violators 
and disturbers of the peace within their own juris- 
diction order, No. 12 went beyond this in many 
cases and after much acrimionious discussion on 
the subject— this unwarranted military edict was 
revoked. 

The section of territory known then, as now, as 
Painted Woods — familiar to m.ost of the readers 
of these sketches — was cp.Hed neutral grounds or 
no men's lands — although both the Sioux and 
Aricarees laid claim by conquest or inheritance — 
and had been a bone of contention between these 
belligerent people ior many decades. Through 
rival yards the subject was brought to their atten- 
with white partisans on either side. The number 
of woodyards or camps in the Sioux country was 
limited to fourteen and in the order of asslo-n- 
ment, the most northernmost yard was established 
at Sibley Island with Frank LeFromboise, the in- 
terpreter, as grantee of the same. This was in 
the Sioux treaty of 1868, and made an express 
condidon. A branch yard was establi.shed at the 
Painted Woods with Baker & Morris in charge. 
Some weeks previous to this Messers Reider & 



189 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

Gluck had moved down from Fort Berthold and 
took up their quarters in the Woods under per- 
mit of and on behalf of the Aricarees who claimed 
they had never relinguished their rights to the 
premises nor were they asked to do so. The two 
rival yards employed sixteen choppers in all. 

About the ist of November 1869, by mutual 
re-arrangement — leaving Reider out of the deal — 
Gluck joined with Morris in establishing a new 
woodyard south of the Fort Stevenson military 
reservation, using Gluck's Aricaree permit in se- 
curing the timber for this purpose. This point 
of varied fortune and misfortune — good for some 
— evil for others, and which as a point was aptly 
termed '^medicine" by the Indians or a "hoodoo" 
by their pale face successors. 

The working force at this yard numbered nine 
men — young, intelligent and vigorous — who had 
started in life with a head full of romantic ideas, 
now in process of practical fulfilment. Wood 
chopping was the only employment offered and 
this was accepted as an entering wedge to a future 
foothold with more promise. The buildings, two 
in number, were pallisaded with a view of Indian 
defense. The rooms were commodious and every 
evening after supper a general discussion was had 
in relation to the situation along the Missouri river, 
especially that relating to General Stanley's order 
No. 12; the attitude of the Durfee & Peck com- 
pany; the Reil rebellion; Sioux and Aricaree war 
and many other subjects of local prominence in 
those days. 



THE CLOSING STORY. 190 

As the evening discussions became more acri- 
monious and it may be said more interesting, a 
resolution was offered and passed by this motley 
gathering to organize in due form and for the dis- 
tinct purpose of bettering the condition and offer- 
ing assistance in unity to such citizens within our 
reach who needed and deserved it. 1 he form of 
organization was after the manner of the Indian 
tribes and its government conducted in much the 
same iashion.* One chief and two chief councillors 
formed the supreme head. A soldier band under 
a head soldier and a ''keeper of the records" 
finished the simplicity of its organization. Like Ma- 
homet's first converts in the caves about Medina, 
the members of this primative organization took 
clairvoyant view of the future and saw sign of 
the fruition of their action that reached beyond 
the group of woodhawks dressed out with fringed 
buckskin, edifying each other with bits of wisdom 
which had generated in their respective craniums. 
It was resolved that each member of the order 
should become proficient in at least one Indian 
language even though it became necessary to 
utilize the services of a ''sleeping dictionary" to 
further the end sought. In the selection of offi- 

*Some accomit is given of this bantling organiza- 
tion in the sketch "A War VV^oman'' in pages 92-3-4 
of Frontier and Indian Life, also some reference in 
this work in the sketch "Chief of the Stranglers." 
This statement as above discribed is an addition, 
not a repitition of the afore mentioned sketches. 



191 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

cers for the order the claim for Mr. Morris, the 
woodyard proprietor, was passed by, and a young 
man named Wheeler chosen chief of the organi- 
zation instead. Mr. Morris was offended thereat. 
He made frequent trips to Fort Stevenson — and 
being a Jew and a shrewd one, he ingratiated 
himself with the officers of the garrison; was in 
full fellowship and had to keep up his end in gab 
at official entertainments by day or by night — in 
parlour or officers' club. 

Morris was resourceful. While he had belittled 
the **chemerical ideas" as he styled the efforts of 
the new order at the woodyard — to the officers at 
the garrison he put an entirely different face to it. 
To them he imparted the organization as an order 
of mystery with its day meetings over big camp 
fires when they should all be chopping his wood. 
He told them that the society was known as the 
Medicine Lodge; that its chief had thousands of 
rounds of fixed amunition and a "cache" of many 
guns of an improved pattern. That he had first 
known the chief of this new society when he was 
hanging out about Douphan's Rapids in the com- 
pany of some others who were in the business of 
gathering pine knots to supply passing steamers. 
Morris, himself, at this time was proprietor of a 
wolfing camp above the mouth of Milk river. 
This in 1867 — two years previous. 

Morris further notified the officers that his whole 
chopping crowd were making ready to go over 
the line to assist General Riel in his efforts to 
create an inland republic out of the Saskatchewan 



THE CLOSING STORY. 192 

basin. He surprised them still more when he In- 
formed his startled listeners that their innocent 
looking post interpreter who went poking quietly 
about the orarrison was not the verdant Jake that 
he appeared to but a full fledged officer with 
a commission in his pocket bearing a captain's 
rank in General Kiel's army. 

Information of this character created a big crop 
of **bng bears" among the officers which the dep- 
lonKuic little Jew thoroughly enjoyed. Had these 
officers done a little investigating for themselves 
instead of taking everything for granted from 
soap bubblers of the Morris stripe, the scarecrow 
produced by the finding of that letter in cipher 
among Reider's affects after his death by violence 
June nth, 1870,* or the sensational dispatch sent 
over the wires from Fort Sully and undoubt- 
edly eminating from the same cotiere of influence 
that had caused General Stanley to make his 
mistake as a division commander in issuing order 
No. 12. The dispatch had its basis on the 
sudden death of Major Galpin at Grand River 
agency sometime in 1870. The Major was an old 
Indian trader of long service — of independent 
notions and fair character and run a tradinor house 
on his own hook and independent of the Durfee 
and Peck company and other than with the writer 
of this sketch who- had a personal regard for him, 
was unknown to any members of the Medicine 
Lodge debating club — for that was all the organ- 

*See sketch, "Letter in Cipher," page 131— Fron- 
tier and Indian Life. 



193 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

izatlon amounted to. The Major's death was sud- 
den but attributed to natural causes by the agency 
physician who had attended him. But nevertheless 
these facts in Galpin's case did not prevent the 
sending over the wires to Washington and to the 
associated press the above mentioned dispatch — 
which read in part as follows: 

"Two hundred miles above this point is a place 
called Painted Woods where a band of outlaws 
are cutting and destroying government timber 
there. The death of the Major (Galpin) is at- 
tributed to mysterious influences from this source 
and whose evil ramifications extends throughout 
all the Northwestern Indian tribes." 

One raw morning in June 1855 a band of South 
Assinabolnes were encamped in a protected gulch 
on the south side of Woody mountain near the 
international boundary line. The Indians, men, 
woman and children numbered about forty alto- 
gather. They seemed scant of apparel^ had few 
horses and the migratory herds of buffalo had 
sheered to the westward and were then moving 
well out toward the Milk river tributaries and the 
old men had advised the party to break camp and 
follow in the wake of the moving bisons, otherwise 
they would stay where they were only to starve. 

This camp of wretched beings were just issuing 
from a whiskey debauch of several days duration, 
the effect being visible on the countenance of 
those who partook of the drugged potion as well 
as those who did not partake but were compelled 



THE CLOSING STORY. 194 

to witness the horrors incident to frenzied savages, 
even worse than senseless, stupid beings, were 
their brothers and fathers, and in some cases, sis- 
ters and mothers. Even the hardened and villian- 
ous venders in these compounds* have put them- 
selves on record as saying there were none of the 
northwestern tribes so easy a prey, and none on 
whom the accursed stuff left a more baneful train, 
than in the camps of the south Assinaboines. 

The resolution to move camp to the southwest 
was agreed upon and the stricken and ill-equipped 
cavalcade set forth upon their journey of chance 
and hope. Owing to the drain that the whiskey 
traders had made on their horse herd, many of 
the party, especially the females were compelled 
to walk and lead their ponies in pack. Among 
these, sorefooted and weary from her first days' 
tramp was a little ten year old girl, who always 
vivacious and lively, came into camp completely 
tired out. So unusual was her demeanor from 
other days, that on the second day of the march a 
yearling colt was secured and the girl tied on its 
back. They had encamped on a high point over- 
looking a creek, and a deep-cut, angling defile, 
must be crossed on the resumption of the march. 
In this coulee a war party of Stoneys or Crees had 
secreted themselves during the night and were 
awaiting the coming of their old enemies. The 
surprise was a complete one to the Asssinaboines 
and five of the party were killed, among them the 
parents of the young female Mezeppa. The colt 

*Larpenteur's Journal. 



195 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

was unruly and not disposed to pack its fair bur- 
den with much complacency,and the girl's mother 
was leading the animal when she fell as one of 
the victims of the war party in ambush. The colt 
finding its halter slackened and terrified by the 
din and yells of battle, charged madly over the 
prairie bearing the tethered girl upon its back. 
In the jumping and jolting the thongs became un- 
loosened and she was pitched forward upon a pile 
of rocks, where she lay apparently unconscious 
for several hours^ at the end of which time she 
was found by some of her people and taken to 
their improvised camp and placed in the care of 
the medicine man. Her injuries were found to be 
serious though not fatal. The young girl's bright 
gaiety seemed to depart, and brooding austerity 
settle upon her once, laughing and happy face. Fate 
decreed that henceforth she was to be known as the 
Hunchback. She would be derided and abused; 
a subject of contempt and ridicule by her fellow, 
beings — and why? Oh! the enigma of humanity. 

The winter of 1865-6 in the Upper Missouri 
country, while not made note of in those days as 
an extremely long one by its inhabitants, was well 
remembered for its snow fall and the severity of 
its storms. In many cases even the bufifalo met 
their death by the extreme cold and exposure to 
the drifting snow that beat against them by a sixty 
mile an hour wind. In this manner — curious as 
it may seem to some — large numbers of buffalos 
were destroyed from the herds, that had drifted 




IRON BULL— Chief of the Crow Nation. 



THE CLOSING STORY. 196 

about the mouth of the Big Muddy stream that 
comes down from the Woody Mountain country. 
The most severe of these storms was about the 
opening of the new year, and when its fury 
was spent, in addition to the distruction wrought 
among the buffalo and horse herds two families 
of Assinaboines were found frozen in their skin 
tepees in the willows near old Fort Union. The 
dead numbered six but in some way a little baby 
girl was saved — and as no especial interest was 
taken in the child by its surviving relatives it was 
given over to the care of the Hunchback woman, 
then living alone. This deformed woman had 
served a medicine man with an uncanny reputa- 
tion — and whose lodge keeper she had been. 
In time the child also shared with its good pro- 
tector the ostracism meeted out to her for that 
which fate alone was responsible, and obloquy 
whose avoidance they never dared to hope for 
except in the seclusion of their lodge, hid from 
observation of the living world — only now and 
again a curl of smoke that arose above the willow 
bar and marked the whereabouts of the lone 
lodge and its quiet inmates. As a timid antelope 
wounded to its death in the midst of its kind by 
some cruel hunter will leave its companions to 
suffer alone in some secluded retreat — as though 
to bring no distress on those who could not relieve 
its pain gr staunch the gaping wound riven by the 
wicked, but bear its wretched misfortune in un- 
complaining solitude and await the death that its 
slayer must also face — so did they. 



197 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

With the wear and tear of passing^ time — the 
old fur company fort opposite the mouth of Yel- 
lowstone river had served the purpose of its con- 
struction — filled its ordained mission — and when 
the summer's sun of 1870 cast its beams on that 
place, once so active within its little sphere of hu- 
man existence, nothing was left of its departed 
activity except the one tepee of the Hunchback 
that posed in its loneliness in the sun beams of a 
quiet morning, like a death lodge over the remains 
of a Sioux, Cheyenne or Arrapahoe brave. And 
other than the rompings of some stray gopher or 
the whirr of the grasshopper, no greeting came 
to the curious or casual caller within the yarded 
precinct of the fort's fast crumbling adobe walls. 

Few of the old fur campany posts in the north- 
west had passed through more varied scenes in 
the play of human life than did Fort Union during 
the forty years of its existence as headquarters of 
the American Fur Company. It had been the 
scene of peace councils as well as hostile combats 
between the neighboring Indian tribes. It was 
here that Audubon had rested and Catlin found 
turning point in his journey along the Upper Mis- 
souri. It was here Maxmilian Prince of Wied 
found some of his most interesting subjects for 
his pen and pencil. It was here the lowly Lar- 
penteur, first a clerk, then trader in charge, con- 
ceived the idea that no place was too obscure 
to lack interest and no story so dull that it would 
not have hearers. His faith in himself was not 



THE CLOSING STOilY. 198 

without Its reward but it was not his to enjoy nor 
could he expect it. The fate of resident traders 
was unifornr distress and povery in their old 
age and Larpenteur but followed in the wake of 
those of that avocation who had gone before and 
moreover was borne down by recollections that 
to him would have brought joy in their oblivion. 

The change in Fort Union from the commercial 
headquarters to its total abandonment was first 
brought about by the arrival of a military force 
under Col. Randall of the 31st regiment and the 
survey of a site for a one company post near 
where old Fort William had once reared its frown- 
ing bastions in opposition to the American Fur 
Company fort for commercial supremacy in the 
northern Indian country, under the leadership of 
Robert Campbell, William Sublette and others. 
Failure followed the opposition and the place be- 
came a rendezvous for free trappers and their In- 
dian families, but disappeared in smoke after the 
killing of Mother Deschamps and her stalwart, 
sons there on June 27, 1836. 

Military domination forced a change of owner- 
ship with the trading establishment and thus it 
was the old fur company was murged with or sold 
out to a new formation thereafter known as the 
Durfee & Peck Company. The principal busi- 
ness of old Union was transferred to the Indian 
trading post then being built several miles below 
the mouth of Milk river and known as Fort Peck. 
The residue of stores and buildings were moved 
down to Fort Buford the new military post, and 



199 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

under the new management became the sutler 
store for the o-arrison. And in this way had the 
orf-at chanoe from autocratic civil to autocratic 
miUtary government taken form at the mouth of 
the Yellowstone river. 

One late day in June, 1870, a young m^n in 
the wood contractor's employ at Fort Buford gen- 
erated an idea in his head for an evening stroll. 
It was Sunday and a beautiful day it had been. 
A trusty rifle was carried at rest on his shoulder 
and his eyes turned alternately right and left for 
sight of the curious and unusual. It was times 
of dano^er thereabout from the Sioux bands under 
Sitting Bull^ Long Dog and the Standing Buffalo 
who made that military post especial tournament 
grounds for counting their ''coos." Over twenty- 
five men had been killed within the environs of 
the military reservation since the building of the 
fort in 1866. The young man with the gun knew 
the places of these tragic scenes and in some of 
them had a personal experience. In his outing 
on that particular day he would pass along among 
the scenes of other day happenings with which he 
had nothing to do. He started for a three mile 
walk and would visit the ruins of old Fort Union 
on his way. He would pass by the place where in 
the first summer of Fort Buford's varied history an 
old citizen was found with his throat cut, the work 
of two confessed soldiers, who had killed him for 
his money — which was only twelve dollars. At 
the first hue and cry suspicion had been directed 




Long Dog, 

Sioux-Aricaree Bandit Chief 
who ranged along the upper 
Missouri during the Seventies. 



THE CLOSING STORY. 200 

to the inmates of a South Assinaboine lodee. As 
he neared the gateway of the old fort he was re- 
minded of another tragedy — and the last one to 
speak of before its abandonment — namely, the 
killing of two Mexicans in the employ of the fur 
company by Bill Smith one of the citizen mail 
carriers of the Fort Totten route. The lodge of 
the Hunchback had been the inception but not 
the scene of the trouble. Smith was an adven- 
turer of the fighting class as were the Mexicans. 
It was a question of direct aim and quick shoot- 
ing and Smith won out in both.* 

On his return trip the pedestrian from Buford 
noted a lone and well smoked tepee to the right 
of the trail and curiosity prompted him to visit it. 
This was the home of the Hunchback who came 
to the door with a frown for the intruder, but on 
sight of the stranger's face her austerity was gone 
and she bid him welcome. She bid her charge 
hasten the gathering of some dry branches while 
a kettle was put to boiling point over the fire 
place. Meantime she opened a parfleshe covered 
sack and exhibited to her guest, beaded neckties, 
knife scabbords and mocassins fancifully decorated 
with paintei! quills of the '1'retful porcupine." 

From another sack of parfleshe the hostess drew 
forth clean cups and plates and her guest was bid- 
den to partake of tea, broiled buffalo and fresh and 

*Another of Smith's many adventures is made note 
of in '^Frontierand Indian Life" page 269. He was 
afterwards among the first settlers to locate in the 
Black Hills and died there in March, 1902. 



201 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

luscious fruit just plucked from medicine berr\' 
stems. She opened a little buckskin sack filled 
with condiment of some sort and sprinkled over 
her fruit. Her guest had a good appetite, for his 
tramp had been a long one. Their conversation 
was conducted in primitive sign talk yet no con- 
veyance in its meaning was lost. His repast over 
and purchasing a few articles and a trifling present 
to the child the white stranger departed for the 
garrison. It was the first time the little Indian girl 
had ever received kindly attention from any one, 
other than her guardian, and it bore response 
quickly: 

"Mother" said the child shortly after the de- 
parture of the stranger, ''Mother, will that white 
man come again." 

"Yes, dear little one" replied the Hunchback, 
"that white man will come again." 

In the autumn of 1872, a skiff containing three 
occupants — a white man, an Indian woman and a 
little girl — reached the site of the abandoned wood 
yard of Morris & Gluck and went into camp. The 
man had come to refresh his memory and to dream 
over the scenes' and incidents he had witnessed 
there during the winter of 1869-70. His friends 
and companions of that day were now scattered 
with the four winds but his memory of them was 
ever active. He had been commanded by the 
order of which he had been honored as its chief 
to choose his Indian tribe, learn its language and 
give fealty to the medicine men thereof. For tribe 



THE CLOSING STORY. 202 

and language he had chosen the South Asslna- 
boine,and as to his fealty to things mysterious he 
had coquetted with and married a priestess or a 
witch of the tribe. He had went farther than any 
of his brothers of his order. He would nurse an 
idea rather than abandon it without a trial. He 
had put the theories of the Medicine Lodge to 
practical test and its results would come with the 
future. His own manner of life as he saw its re- 
flection was that of a savage pure and simple. He 
hunted wild game and moved from place to place 
in the sheer delight of change. His nature was 
animal and in this way could feed its desires. 

During the five years that came after he followed 
the vocation of a woodyard man, and located be 
times in some of the principal cottonwood points 
on the Missouri between Fort Stevenson and the 
Square Buttes covering a range of eighty miles. 
The trio put in their first winter at the Burnt 
Woods where deer were abundant and fat, and 
summered under the domes of the picturesque 
Square Buttes, enjoying their recreation when the 
air was sweet and balmy and all nature there- 
about decked out in its summer finery. Two years 
of their unit lives was passed at Pretty Point — a 
misnomer now, as the few jagged and gnarled 
tree trunks that front Oliver's county capital are 
a burlesque of the magnificent grove of young 
cottonwoods that once stood in line along the 
rivers's front there. But the axeman could see 
no beauty in nature's best display with his heart 



203 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

and his soul calloused by greed. That beautiful 
grove has long since passed away but who among 
its despoilers could speak thus: ''Those trees that I 
destroyed were of lasting financial benefit to me." 
Truth will compel him to say instead: 
"Those fine young trees that I wantonly chopped 
away seem to have brought a curse on me and 
mine." 

As time sped on a change came to the chief of 
the Medicine Lodge and his family. There had 
been no discordancy or family jars to disturb the 
home circle heretofore but the time had arrived 
for this innovation. The adopted daughter was 
approaching womanhood and the eye of the master 
was upon her — and she would be helpless as was 
her foster mother in combatting his designs, They 
were in a land of strangers and strange people, 
and between themselves and their far northern 
home a tribal enemy lay between who would not 
discriminate as to sex or age when a fresh scalp 
lock was sought for. 

While the comparison might be termed odious 
on account of the great disparity of station, yet 
this lowly and unfortunate red woman had much 
in sympathy with Josephine the discarded wife of 
the first Napoleon. While the desires of the 
Corsican giant like our humble chief of the lodge 
were in kindred thought — namely the perpetua- 
tion of their strain — yet the discarded in each case 
bowed to the inevitable only when the inevitable 
came. While Josephine represented the highest 



THE CLOSING STORY. 204 

attainment of her sex — beautiful and accomplished 
and the head of the female social world, the for- 
saken Haunchback of Pretty Point could not as 
much as say: "I have a friend in need." But the 
outcome was in parallel. Each suffered the buf- 
fitings of reproach they could not hinder; a fall 
in pride they could not relieve; a flow of silent 
tears they could not stay. The French empress 
could forgive if she could not forget. The be- 
trayed Hunchback was an Indian — and from in- 
stillation of her free wild blood could do neither 
one or the other. But there was something she 
could do — put on the dissembler's mask. On 
final severance from her accustomed place as 
mistress of the domesUc lodge she was in a mood 
to court well that plastic art. 

The Hunchback had one request to make. She 
loved her adopted daughter and desired to remain 
in the lodge with her, and upon the intercession 
of the young wife the request was granted by the 
master of the lodge. 

In the autumn of 1876 the chief of the Medicine 
Lodge with his child wife and the Hunchback re- 
turned to the Fort Buford country and thence up 
the Yellowstone river, where adventurous spirits 
found a congenial haven after breaking the cordon 
of the Sioux who had so long^ held exclusive right 
to the valley by force of arms. The surrender 
of Crazy Horse and his warrior band to the gen- 
eral Government and the retreat of Sitting Bull 
and Gall with their immediate command across 



205 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

the British line left the Yellowstone and tributary 
streams, other than the straggling bands under the 
Sioux chief Lame Deer, the whole valley was 
comparatively clear from hostile clans. While 
the whites rushed in from the Missouri to find 
advantageous sites for peaceful pursuits, the moun- 
tain Crows under their chief Iron Horn moved 
down the valley from the rugged Big Horn range 
in pursuit of the last of the buffalo herds that had 
once darkened the plain there, and cropped its 
sweet grasses for hundreds upon hundreds of 
years. 

The chief of the Medicine Lodge followed his 
accustomed vocation as woodhawk until slack of 
business on the Yellowstone compelled a with- 
drawal of the boats. He traded for robes until 
wild buffalo were no more. He then went to 
trading with the Northern Cheyennes on Rose- 
bud river until their extreme poverty compelled a 
discontinuance. He then tried ranching and with 
the help of his growing family made some success 
at it. The Hunchback sat in her accustomed 
place as doorkeeper of the lodge and when not 
fondling her adopted daughter's children was busy 
with her sacks of mystery and medicine. In this 
way the family had passed twenty years of their 
lives— 1876 to 1896— along the valley of the Yel- 
lowstone river. 

One dreary autumn day in 1897, while in a 
reminiscent mood and thinking of the Medicine 
Lodge and its scattered brethren, particularly of 




A Cheyenne Indian Village on 
Rosebud River. 



THE CLOSING STORY. 206 

its chief, and as record keeper of the order looked 
up his whereabouts on the Yellowstone and sent 
to his address a marked copy of the Washburn 
Leader containing some personal recollections of 
the military epoch on the river that might be of 
interest to him. In due time came a short answer 
from the now venerable and careworn chief with 
the fqllowing openmg sentence: "I have just 
buried my oldest daughter who had been going 
to the mission (Rosebud) school. As you may 
remember, she was near a young woman grown, 
and I am heartbroken at our loss — though we 
should be thankful thai we have six children left 
to us yet." 

Five years later an ex-partner of the chief in 
the days when the Burnt Woods was headquarters 
to a line of woodyards for steamboat traffic, in re- 
sponse to a supposed telepathic call, wrote a let- 
ter asking about himself and family and how the 
world was using him; received in part the following 

pathetic response: 

******* 

**I have but little of life left in me now for the 
ordeal I have passed through would most kill any 
one. My wife is dead. All my daughters but 
the youngest child are dead — but Aunty [The 
Hunchback] is still with us." 



SKETCHES OF 
FRONTIER i# INDIAN LIFE. 



ON THE 

Uppee Missouei & Geeat Plaii^s. 



BY JOSEPH HENRY TAYLOR. 



Printed and Published by the Author at Washburn, N. Dak, 



Contains 306 pages actual reading matter. Pro- 
fusely illustrated yilth photo-engravings. Substan- 
tially bound in clotli. Title stamped in gold. Price^ 
$1.2S, Postpaid. 

t ■BttllM >i 

SOME PKESS COMMENTS. 

"His extended observation and experience have given 
abundant material to fill several volumes. His sketches 
of Indian character, their habits and treatment by the 
Government are well written in the present volume. — 
Oxford (Pa.) Press." 

"It contains some very interesting sketches of early 
days in the Northwest and some matters of historical 
moment which will deserve a permanent record. His 
story of the treatment of Inkpaduta by the early settlers 
of Northwestern Iowa throws new light on the origin of 
the famous Spirit Lake Massacre, and, while two wrongs 
do not make one right, it is plain that there were two 
sides to the question in the events that led up to that 
terrible affair."— The Settler, (Bismarck, N. D.) 

One of the old timers in Dakota Territory is Jos. H. 
Taylor, who resides at Washburn, N. D. and who has 



been a continuous resident here since 1867, though be- 
ing here even before that date. He is a charming writer, 
and has the faculty of close observation usually well cul- 
tivated as is usual with all frontiersmen. The third 
edition of his work Sketches of Frontier and Indian Life 
on the Upper Missouri and Great Plains has just ap- 
peared; the first appearing in 1889 and the second in 
1895. The present edition contains much new matter. 
The work embraces over 300 pages and is embellished 
with good illustrations. The book is valuable from a 
historical standpoint as it contains many events of inter- 
est, and the Indian legends are graphically told. The 
work is one that will interest every reader." — Fargo 
(N. D.) Forum. 

"Frontier and Indian Life, Joseph Henry Taylor, 
Author and Publisher, Washburn, N. D., is a series of 
sketches drawn from the author's own experience of 
over thirty years on the Indian frontier. As an enlisted 
soldier, a hunter and trapper, a woodsman and a journ- 
alist, he has gained a personal knowledge of his subject 
from both the red and the white man's standpoint that 
makes his stories particularly interesting. 

The volume opens with the story of Inkpaduta and 
the Spirit Lake massacre, showing the causes which led 
to the first Sioux outbreak of history ; and later tells of 
the revenge of Inkpaduta' s sons on the battlefield of the 
Little Big Horn, and gives Sitting Bull's denial of the 
part usually ascribed to him in that unhappy affair. 

Next comes an incident in which a brave little band 
of Indians rather than be taken by the foe, marched 
deliberately into an ice hole on the river, and one by one 
passed forever out of sight into the current beneath. 

Then comes the pathetic story of "Bummer Dan," a 
white man who found and lost a fortune in Colorado's 
early mining days, and then again the legend of The 
Scalpless Warrior and his Daughter, a tale in which his- 
tory, romance and folklore are admirably blended. 

The Great Plains of 1864, Fort Berthold in 1869, 
Early days around Fort Buford, With a Gros Ventre 
War Party, Bull-boating through the Sioux country, and 



many others of similiar nature gives glimpses of India-i 
life and thought in the early days that are both interest- 
ing and valuable. Lonesome Charley, Buckskin Joe 
and others are western character sketches of a type now 
rapidly passing away. 

Altogether the collection is unique, and bears an in- 
terest not only for the Indian scholar but for the general 
reader who likes an occassional dip into the unusual." — 
Southern (Va.) Workman. 



"It cannot be said of Mr. Taylor, as of so many of 
the writers, who take up space in even the best of our 
magazines, that he has rushed into print when he had 
no story to tell. 

Thirty years ago, when all Dakota was one vast battle 
ground for the "blood-thursty Sioux," the "Fost-eared 
Assinnaboines," "Blackleg Anathaways," "painted Gros 
Ventres" "hidden faced Sisseton" and other savage 
tribes, all engaged in a war of extermination, one tribe 
against another and all against the buffalo and the pale 
face, Mr. Taylor was a hunter and trapper at Painted 
Woods on the Missouri. Strange indeed, if any man 
who had passed so many years in this wild life should 
not have a tale to tell that were worth reading and Mr. 
Taylor had rare ability as well as opportunity for collect- 
ing material for his book. 

Ke has set out in a natural and modest way many 
dramatic incidents in his own life and in the lives of those 
with whom he was brought in contact. Tales are told 
of battles fought and friendships made ; of desperate 
struggles with cold and hunger in the terrible blizzard, 
of Indian love and vengence from which neither age 
nor infancy, womanhood nor weakness could hope for 
pity. 

Yet this man, who surely knows them well, is no 
enemy of the Indians and his book is no mere tale but 
a study of these people. 

A ''Fated War Party" is the story of a tribe, **Band 
of Canoes" who made their home in our own Mouse 
river valley. The scenes of many of the tales are fam- 
iliar to us and since reading Mr. Taylor's book, they 



have an added charm, that which historical associations 
give. 

We call attention of our readers to the need of foster- 
ing the love for our surroundings especially in our young 
people and recommend "Frontier and Indian Life" as 
a means." — Ward County (N. D.) Reporter. 



JCaieidoscopic fsCives, 

^ Companion ^oo/c to 

FRONTIER AND INDIAN LIFE. 



Complete in itself. Contains over ^00 pages witli tlie en- 
gravings. Profusely illustrated witli valuable and rare en- 
gravings, mostly fine photos. Substantially and attractively 
bound in cloth. Price, $1.00, Postpaid. 



SOME PRESS COMMENTS. 



"Its the best of reading from cover to cover and we 
discovered ourselves neglecting our duties once or twice 
in order to peruse the contents of this interesting book." 
— ^The Bottineau Courant, Bottineau, N. D. 

"This is one of Mr. Taylor's latest works in which the 
author's well known ability to picture frontier life in all 
its beauty and simplicity is again brought to the public's 
attention." — Mandan (N. D.) Independent. 

" Kaleidoscopic Lives" is the title of an interesting 
book of sketches of life largely in the Dakotas in the 
earlier days by Joseph Henry Taylor, author of "Fron- 
tier and Indian Life" and "Twenty Years on the Trap 
Line," with illustrations. The book includes some re- 
miniscences of the civil war and breezy incidents of life 
in old Dakota territory, when Yankton was the capital." 
— Minneapolis Journal. 



SEP 5- 1901 



SEP. 8 1902 



